MY    SECOND   COUNTRY 


MY  SECOND  COUNTRY 

(FRANCE)   By  ROBERT  DELL 


"  La  France  de  Voltaire  et  de  Montevsquieu — 

celle-Ia     est    la    grande,     la    vraie    France." 

— ANATOLE   FRANCE. 


LONDON:    JOHN    LANE,   THE    BODLEY    HEAD 
NEW    YORK:    JOHN    LANE    COMPANY,    MCMXX. 


> 
•t. 


TO      A      REPRESENTATIVE      OF     THE      FRANCE     OF 

THE     FUTURE,     MY      INTERNATIONAL     GRANDSON, 

OILLES-JACQUES         SOURIAU,        BORN        ON         THE 

ANNIVERSARY      OF      THE      PARIS      COMMUNE. 


425500 


CONTENTS 

INTRODUCTION vii 

CHAPTER   I 

THE    FRENCH    CHARACTER 13 

British  mistakes  about  France — The  paradox  of  the 
French  character — Individual  and  collective  intelli- 
gence— The  difference  between  Paris  and  France — 
The  democratic  spirit — Respect  for  authority — 
Social  and  political  liberty — French  intellectualism 
— French  Chauvinism  and  British  Imperialism. 

CHAPTER   II 

PROBLEMS    OF    RECONSTRUCTION          ....          40 

France  an  agricultural  country — The  peasantry  and  the 
proletariat — Limitation  of  the  family — Effects  of 
the  war  on  the  population — Economic  and  financial 
situation — Should  France  become  an  industrial 
nation  ? — Protection  and  its  results — The  colonial 
system — Economic  Malthusianism — The  Government 
and  the  profiteers — The  .power  of  finance. 

frh 

CHAPTER    III 

THE    ADMINISTRATIVE    AND    POLITICAL    SYSTEMS     .          73 

French  institutions  not  democratic — The  centralized 
administration — Examples  of  bureaucratic  methods 
— The  real  rulers  of  France — The  political  police — 
Th« — F*«acJi__J}pjisiituJio.n— Secret  Treaties — The 
French  Parliament — Methods  of  election — The  power 
of  the  Senate — Proposed  constitutional  reforms. 


iv  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER   IV 

THE   DISCREDIT  OF  PARLIAMENT  AND  ITS   CAUSES.       Ill 

Anti -parliamentarism — Causes  of  the  decadence  of  Par- 
liament — Backwardness  of  social  legislation — Neglect 
of  economic  questions — Powers  of  French  landlords — 
Criminal  procedure  :  the  secret  instruction — Influence 
of  politics  on  the  administration  of  justice — What 
the  Third  Republic  has  done — Secularization  of  the 
schools — Separation  of  Church  and  State — The 
Associations  Law  of  1901 — The  Religious  Orders — 
Present  impotence  of  Parliament — The  group  system 
— Failure  of  the  Radical  Party — Fear  of  responsi- 
bility— Corruption  in  French  politics  :  its  causes — 
Arbitrary  powers  of  the  Executive — How  deputies  are 
corrupted — The  choice  between  revolution  and 
reaction. 

CHAPTER   V 

RESULTS    OF   THE    REVOLUTION 164 

Mistakes  of  the  Revolution  chiefly  due  to  external  inter- 
ference— Jacobinism  and  the  Terror — Causes  of 
French  militarism — Social  and  economic  results  of  the 
Revolution — The  abolition  of  the  old  provinces — 
Natural  and  mystical  patriotism — Necessity  of 
decentralization — M.  Jean  Hennessy's  proposals. 

CHAPTER  VI 

SMALL   PROPERTY    AND   ITS    RESULTS          .  .  .183 

The  bourgeoisie  and  the  peasants — Subdivision  of 
property — Demoralizing  influence  of  small  property — 
The  petit  bourgeois  spirit — Selfishness  of  the  wealthy 
classes — Large  and  small  landlords — Thrift — Eco- 
nomic results  of  small  property — The  fear  of  taking 
risks — Backwardness  of  French  business  methods — 
The  banking  system — The  petit  bourgeois  spirit  in 
national  finance — Conservatism  in  practical  matters 
of  life — Lack  of  initiative  and  enterprise — Effects  of 
small  property  on  wages  and  salaries — Failure 
of  peasant  proprietorship — Obsolete  agricultural 
methods — Waste  of  labour — Decrease  of  the  rural 
population — The  critical  situation  of  agriculture — 
The  great  qualities  of  the  peasants — Ideals  of  the 
proletariat — The  intellectual  bourgeoisie. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  VII 

SOCIALISM,   SYNDICALISM  AND  STATE  CAPITALISM.       235 

Why  France  needs  Socialism — Socialism  and  Etatisme — 
The  railway  system — Tramways  and  omnibuses — The 
postal  service — State  monopolies  in  practice — The 
pawnbroking  monopoly — The  vices  of  State  Capital- 
ism— Reaction  against  Etatisme — The  Syndicalist 
theory — The  C.G.T. — Communist  and  individualist 
Anarchism — Reformist  and  revolutionary  Socialism — 
Effects  of  the  war  on  Socialism  and  Syndicalism — 
Revolutionary  Socialism  and  Liberalism — The 
reaction  in  the  bourgeoisie — Probability  of  revolution 
— French  Socialists  and  direct  action — The  dictator- 
ship of  the  proletariat — Example  of  the  Paris 
Commune — The  Federative  Communist  Republic — 
Realism  of  French  Socialism — Mr.  Wilson's  failure 
and  its  results — The  bourgeois  proletariat — Dangers  of 
the  present  situation. 

CHAPTER   VIII 

BACK   TO   VOLTAIRE 289 

Voltaire  the  representative  of  the  "  True  France  " — The 
other  France :  Pascal,  Chateaubriand,  Joseph  de 
Maistre — The  Liberal  Catholic  movement :  Lamen- 
nais,  Montalembert,  Lacordaire — Puritanism  in 
French  Catholicism — The  non-religious  character  of 
the  French — Political  Catholicism — The  Modernist 
movement  :  its  failure — Identification  of  the  Church 
with  reaction — Catholic  revival  in  the  bourgeoisie — 
Brunetiere — Decline  of  religious  practice — Effect  of 
the  war  on  religion — Bergsonism  and  Pragmatism — 
The  Church  and  M.  Bergson — Henri  Barbusse — The 
revival  of  Rationalism. 

INDEX  319 


INTRODUCTION 


THE  title  of  this  book  has  not  been  chosen  at 
random  :  it  is  literally  true.  France  has  been  my 
home  for  more  than  twelve  years,  but  it  was  already 
my  second  country  long  before  I  went  to  live  there. 
Indeed  I  cannot  remember  a  time  when  France  had 
not  a  large  place  in  my  affections.  Among  my 
earliest  recollections  are  the  pictures  of  the  Franco- 
German  War  of  1870  in  the  bound  volumes  of  the 
Illustrated  London  News  which  we  had  at  home. 
Perhaps  my  elders  who  showed  and  explained  the 
pictures  to  me  were  themselves  Francophile ;  they 
must  have  been,  or  how  should  I  at  that  early  age 
have  been  filled,  as  I  was,  with  enthusiasm  for  the 
cause  of  France  and  indignation  at  the  wrongs  that 
she  had  suffered  ?  Later  on  Victor  Hugo  and 
Swinburne  intensified  my  love  and  admiration  for 
France  and  gave  it  a  more  reasoned  basis ;  France 
became  for  me  the  country  of  the  Revolution,  the 
symbol  of  democracy  and  republicanism.  Since 
then  my  opinions  on  almost  every  subject  have 
changed  more  than  once,  as  must  the  opinions  of 
any  man  that  has  lived  more  than  fifty  years  in  this 
world,  unless  his  existence  has  been  that  of  a 
vegetable,  but  the  enthusiasm  for  revolutionary 
and  republican  France  has  never  changed  or 
diminished. 

The  love  of  France  in  the  abstract  took  a  concrete 
form  as  I  came  to  know  French  people.  I  went  to 
live  in  France  of  my  own  choice,  not  because  any 


viii  INTRODUCTION 

circumstances  obliged  me  to  do  so.  Since  then  it 
is  almost  too  little  to  say  that  France  has  been  my 
second  country.  When  circumstances  made  me  an 
involuntary  exile  in  my  native  land,  I  found  myself 
less  at  home  there  than  in  my  adopted  country. 
For  I  have  not  merely  lived  in  France  :  I  have  lived 
with  and  among  French  people.  Most  foreigners 
that  go  to  live  in  France  fail  through  no  fault  of 
their  own  to  get  into  close  contact  with  the  French 
people.  Many  of  them  remain  in  France  for  years 
without  ever  getting  to  know  the  French  in  their 
own  homes,  and  mix  almost  entirely  with  other 
immigrants  of  their  own  nationality ;  their  ac- 
quaintance with  Frenchmen  is  restricted  to  business 
or  official  relations.  For  the  French,  although  far 
from  inhospitable,  are  slow  in  making  friends  and 
reluctant  to  open  their  doors  to  strangers. 

It  was,  however,  my  good  fortune  to  have  several 
French  friends — two  or  three  of  them  even  intimate 
— before  I  went  to  live  in  the  country.  I  was, 
therefore,  able  soon  to  make  more  friends  and  from 
the  first  I  have  lived  almost  entirely  in  the  society 
of  French  people.  Moreover,  although  my  home  is 
in  Paris,  I  have  friends  and  acquaintances  in  many 
other  parts  of  France,  and  they  include  people  of 
various  classes  and  opinions.  I  have  intimate 
friends  among  the  Parisian  proletariat l  and  long 

1  Although  it  is  true  that  the  situation  of  the  modern  work- 
man is  not  identical  with  that  of  the  Roman  proletarius  and 
that  all  workmen  are  not  absolutely  indigent,  I  agree  with  M. 
Emile  Vanclervelde  ("  Le  Socialisme  centre  1'Etat,"  pp.  70-72) 
that  there  is  no  sufficient  reason  for  abandoning  a  technical  term 
which  is  convenient,  universally  understood  and  sanctioned  by 
seventy  years  of  usage.  The  proletariat  was  defined  by  Marx 
and  Engels  as  "  that  class  of  modern  workers  who  have  no  means 
of  subsistence  except  in  so  far  as  they  find  work  and  who  find 
work  only  so  far  as  the  work  is  profitable  to  capitalists."  There 
are  workers  that  do  not  belong  to  that  class  and  some  word  is 
necessary  to  make  the  distinction. 


INTRODUCTION  ix 

stays  in  various  country  districts  have  enabled  me 
\o  know  the  peasants  and  that  admirable  body  of 
men  and  women  to  whom  France  owes  so  much — 
the  country  school  teachers.  The  more  I  know  the 
French  people  the  fonder  I  become  of  them.  Like 
all  human  beings,  they  have  the  defects  of  their 
qualities,  but  they  have  one  quality  which  makes 
them  the  most  charming  people  in  the  world  to  live 
with — they  understand  the  art  of  living. 

In  these  pages,  which  are  intended  to  be  a  slight 
contribution  to  the  study  of  some  aspects  of  French 
life,  attention  will  be  drawn  to  certain  defects,  as 
they  seem  to  me,  in  French  institutions  and 
methods.  I  shall  make  no  apology  for  drawing 
attention  to  them.  Their  existence  is  recognized  by 
all  the  thoughtful  Frenchmen  that  I  know,  although 
they  would  not  all  agree  as  to  their  causes  and 
possible  remedies.  Indeed,  if  I  venture  to  write 
about  them,  it  is  only  because  I  have  been 
repeatedly  urged  to  do  so  by  French  friends  who 
have  been  good  enough  to  say  that  my  peculiar 
position  enables  me  to  combine  the  detachment  of 
an  outsider  with  some  amount  of  inside  knowledge. 
Their  opinion  is,  no  doubt,  too  flattering,  but  at 
least  I  can  claim  to  speak  with  sincerity  and 
sympathy.  The  first  suggestion  of  a  book  of  this 
kind  was  made  to  me  before  the  war.  So  long  as 
the  war  continued  it  would  have  been  inopportune, 
but  at  this  critical  moment  in  the  history  of  France, 
when  she  will  need  all  her  intellectual  and 
material  resources  to  recover  from  the  terrible  blows 
which  the  war  has  dealt  her,  it  is  useful  to  consider 
what  changes  may  be  necessary  to  the  solution  of 
the  vast  and  difficult  problem  of  reconstruction. 
The  political  situation  in  France  appears  to 
me  to  give  every  sign  that  she  is  nearing  the  end  of 
a  regime.  I  do  not  believe  that  the  political 


x  INTRODUCTION 

institutions  which  have  now  existed  for  nearly  fifty 
years  can  survive,  without  radical  alterations,  the 
social  and  economic  upheaval  which  the  war  has 
brought  about  in  Europe.  They  have  never  worked 
satisfactorily,  for  they  were  falsified  in  their  origin, 
and  the  war  has  revealed  in  a  glaring  light  their 
fundamental  inconsistencies.  In  some  other  than 
political  respects  France  is  behind  the  times  and 
drastic  changes  are  needed  if  she  is  to  recover 
herself  and  hold  her  own  in  the  world.  Much  may 
be  hoped  from  the  marvellous  recuperative  power 
of  the  French  people,  of  which  so  striking  an  ex- 
ample was  given  after  1871 ;  but  the  injury  inflicted 
on  France  by  the  war  of  1870  was  trivial  in 
comparison  with  that  which  the  war  just  ended 
has  inflicted  upon  her.  All  the  good  sense  and  all 
the  intelligence  of  the  French  people  will  be  needed 
to  repair  that  injury.  And  this  time,  if  the  recovery 
is  to  be  as  complete  as  it  was  half  a  century  ago, 
there  must  be  a  far  more  searching  examination 
into  economic  and  political  conditions  and  far  more 
drastic  measures  must  be  taken  with  abuses  and 
with  the  obstacles  to  progress  raised  by  the 
obscurantist  conservatism  of  certain  classes.  If,  in 
however  small  a  degree,  I  can  contribute  to  the 
necessary  examination,  I  shall  feel  that  I  have 
repaid  a  fraction  of  the  debt  which  I  owe  to  the 
country  which  I  have  chosen  as  my  home  and  in 
which  I  hope  to  spend  the  rest  of  my  days. 

ROBERT  DELL. 

LONDON,  29  September,  1919. 


MY  SECOND   COUNTRY 


MY    SECOND    COUNTRY 

CHAPTER   I 

THE  FRENCH   CHARACTER 

BRITISH  opinion  in  regard  to  France  has  com- 
pletely changed  since  the  war.  Before  the  war  the 
French  were  popularly  regarded  in  England  as  a 
frivolous  people.  Most  Englishmen's  knowledge  of 
France  was  derived  from  trips  to  Paris,  often 
undertaken  for  the  purpose  of  indulging  in 
amusements  which  their  reputation  for  respect- 
ability and  an  observant  conjugal  eye  prevented 
them  from  enjoying  in  London,  Manchester,  or 
Birmingham,  although  those  places  give  just  as 
many  opportunities  for  them  in  a  rather  more 
sordid  form.  Nothing  has  amused  me  more  than 
the  comments  of  English  friends  on  the  immorality 
of  France,  comments  made  with  a  sublime  un- 
consciousness of  the  fact  that,  if  they  found  what 
they  call  immorality  in  Paris,  it  was  for  the  reason 
that  they  would  find  it  in  any  large  town,  namely, 
because  they  went  to  look  for  it.  For  them  France 
was  Paris ;  and  Paris  was  the  Grand  Boulevard,  the 
showy  restaurants,  the  Folies  Bergere  and  the  night 
cafes  in  the  neighbourhood  of  the  Place  Pigalle. 
The  French  were,  therefore,  a  people  in  the  habit 
of  sitting  up  in  cafes  half  the  night  with  hospitable 

13 


14  MY  SECOND   COUNTRY 

ladles  on  their  knees.  Hence  the  legend  that  the 
French  were  frivolous  and  dissolute.  In  fact,  they 
are  aa  extremely  serious  and  hardworking  people, 
less  eager  for  amusements  than  the  English  and 
more  capable  of  amusing  themselves.  Nowadays 
too  many  English  people  never  seem  happy  without 
set  amusement ;  they  must  be  at  a  theatre,  a  music- 
hall,  or  at  least  a  cinematograph.  The  braying 
band  in  nearly  every  London  restaurant  betrays  the 
sad  fact  that  conversation  is  a  lost  art.  In  France  it 
is  still  the  amusement  that  all  intelligent  people 
like  best,  for  hi  France  even  smart  society  has  not 
killed  conversation  by  declaring  it  "  bad  form  "  to 
talk  about  anything  but  golf  or  the  idiosyncrasies 
of  one's  acquaintances.  The  French  are  gay,  they 
are  witty,  but  they  are  less  frivolous  than  the 
English  in  the  true  sense  of  the  term.  Young 
Frenchmen  perhaps  took  life  too  seriously  even 
before  the  war ;  they  have  had  too  much  reason  for 
taking  it  seriously  during  the  last  five  years. 

According  to  popular  legend  before  the  war,  the 
French  were  not  only  frivolous  and  immoral,  they 
were  also  a  decadent  race.  It  must  be  admitted 
that  this  legend  was  encouraged  by  certain  political 
parties  in  France  and  by  their  organs  in  the  Press. 
The  French  reactionary  papers,  in  their  hatred  for 
the  Republic,  had  been  preaching  for  years  that 
republican  institutions  had  demoralised  their 
country  and  reduced  it  to  decadence.  For  some 
reason,  which  I  have  never  been  able  to  fathom, 
foreign  correspondents  in  France  quote  almost  ex- 
clusively the  reactionary  Press ;  it  is  not,  therefore, 
surprising  that  foreign  opinion  was  misled.  The 
result  of  these  errors  was  general  amazement  in 
England  and  other  foreign  countries  at  the  way  in 
which  the  French  people  rallied  to  the  defence  of 
France  and  at  their  heroic  conduct  in  the  war. 


THE  FRENCH  CHARACTER       15 

These  decadents  turned  out  to  be  the  best  soldiers 
in  the  world.  More  than  once  the  bravery  of  the 
French  soldiers  alone  saved  the  Allies  from  defeat ; 
the  defence  of  Verdun  will  ever  be  counted  one  of 
the  most  splendid  examples  of  human  courage  and 
tenacity  in  the  history  of  the  world. 

Nobody  that  knew  France  was  surprised.  More 
than  ten  years  ago,  when  the  17th  Regiment  refused 
to  fire  on  the  revolting  wine-growers  in  the  South  of 
France,  I  protested  in  an  article  published  in  the 
London  Nation  against  the  deduction  that  the 
soldiers  of  that  regiment  would  refuse  to  defend 
France  against  attack.  I  maintained,  on  the  con- 
trary, that  their  conduct  was  a  proof  of  superior 
intelligence  which  would  make  them  all  the  better 
soldiers  in  a  cause  which  they  believed  to  be  just. 
They  held  that  they  had  been  called  upon  for 
military  service  only  for  the  purpose  of  national 
defence,  and  they  refused  quite  rightly  to  be  used  as 
a  police  force  against  their  own  relatives  and 
friends.  As  citizen-soldiers  they  regarded  them- 
selves as  free  men  and  not  as  slaves.  The  war  has 
justified  my  opinion. 

French  reactionaries  have  tried  to  account  for  a 
phenomenon  which  belied  their  prophecies  by  the 
theory  of  beneficent  war  which  changes  hearts  and 
characters  by  a  miracle.  Miracles  do  not  happen 
and  a  great  crisis  such  as  the  war  does  not  change 
people  :  it  reveals  their  true  characters.  In  France, 
as  elsewhere,  the  war  has  shown  people  as  they 
really  are — has  laid  bare  their  qualities  and  defects. 
On  the  whole,  it  has  not  given  us  in  any  country  a 
very  pleasing  view  of  human  nature,  but  it  has  at 
least  proved  that  the  French  are  not  a  decadent 
race. 

The  discovery  that  they  are  not  has,  caused 
English  opinion  suddenly  to  veer  round  from  one 


16  MY  SECOND  COUNTRY 

extreme  to  the  other — from  ill-informed  criticism  to 
equally  ill-informed  and  indiscriminating  laudation. 
Frivolous  and  immoral  France  has  become  a  sort  of 
hermaphrodite  deity  made  up  of  Joan  d'Arc 
and  M.  Clemenceau.  I  am  not  sure  that  this  ex- 
travagant adulation  is  more  complimentary  to  the 
French  than  the  extravagant  depreciation  of  the 
past,  for  the  latter  at  least  allowed  them  to  be 
human.  The  present  attitude  of  the  British  public 
towards  France  is  rather  like  that  of  those  men  who 
regard  women  as  angels  too  good  for  this  world, 
and  consequently  treat  them  as  imbeciles.  Some 
fate  will  have  it  that  we  in  England  almost  in- 
variably praise  the  French  for  qualities  that  they 
do  not  possess  and  blame  them  for  defects  which  are 
not  theirs — or  else  applaud  their  defects  and 
condemn  their  qualities. 

Perhaps  it  is  not  surprising  after  all  that  the 
French  are  not  understood  by  other  peoples,  for 
they  are  not  easy  to  understand.  The  French 
character  is  a  paradox :  it  combines  elements 
apparently  opposed  to  one  another.  For  instance, 
the  French  in  the  majority  are  conservative  in  all 
that  matters,  but  at  the  same  time  they  are 
ruthlessly  iconoclast  and  indifferent  to  historical 
associations.  So  there  is  no  country  in  which  such 
closeness  in  money  matters  and  such  generosity  are 
to  be  found  side  by  side,  sometimes  in  the  same 
individuals.  Again,  one  of  the  most  striking 
qualities  of  the  French  is  their  innate  good  sense ;  it 
is  most  conspicuous  perhaps  in  the  peasants,  but 
most  Frenchmen  have  in  them  something  of  the 
peasant.  The  bourgeois l  is  usually  the  descendant  of 

1  I  shall  use  the  terms  "  bourgeois  "  and  "  bourgeoisie  "  through- 
out this  book.  They  have  almost  become  English  words 
and  there  are  no  synonyms  for  them.  The  term  "  middle  class  " 
is  not  a  synonym  for  the  bourgeoisie,  which  includes  the  upper 
class.  (See  page  26.) 


THE  FRENCH  CHARACTER        17 

peasants  and  so  is  the  workman  of  the  towns ;  both 
retain  traces  of  the  soil.  This  good  sense  is  con- 
spicuous in  all  the  ordinary  affairs  of  daily  life. 
It  is  rationalist,  even  materialist — as  positivist  as 
the  philosophy  of  Auguste  Comte,  that  essentially 
French  intellect.  But  in  politics  the  good  sense  of 
the  Frenchman  often  seems  to  desert  him  and  he 
becomes  the  sport  of  words  and  phrases.  This  is 
more  true  of  the  bourgeoisie  than  of  the  other 
classes  and  least  true  of  the  peasantry ;  even  in 
politics  the  peasant  retains  his  shrewd  scepticism 
and  sense  of  realities.  The  bourgeois  has  suffered 
from  a  too  purely  literary  education  which  has 
made  him  attach  more  importance  to  words  than 
to  things.  The  total  ignorance  of  economic  ques- 
tions, for  example,  that  one  finds  even  among 
Frenchmen  of  high  intelligence  and  great  knowledge 
is  astonishing.  Nowhere  is  that  ignorance  more 
general  than  among  politicians ;  not  one  of  the  most 
prominent  men  in  French  politics  outside  the 
Socialist  party,  except  M.  Caillaux,  has  any  real 
knowledge  of  economics  or  seems  to  pay  much  atten- 
tion to  them.  M.  Clemenceau  is  a  case  in  point. 
His  greatest  admirer  would  not  venture  to  say  that 
he  ever  grasped  even  the  elementary  data  of  an 
economic  problem  or  ever  thought  it  worth  while  to 
try  to  do  so ;  his  attitude  towards  such  problems  is 
purely  romantic  and  literary.  Oratory,  too,  has  a 
fatal  influence  in  French  politics;  French  orators 
are  many,  and  among  them  are  some  consummate 
artists — M.  Briand,  for  instance.  The  taste  for  rhe- 
toric is  as  dangerous  as  a  craving  for  drugs  and  has 
much  the  same  effect  on  the  mind  as  have  drugs  on 
the  body.  Hence  the  tendency  to  desert  realities 
for  metaphysical  abstractions  which  leads  a 
Chamber  of  Deputies  to  greet  with  frantic  applause 
the  declaration  of  a  Minister  that  France  is  "  the 


18  MY   SECOND  COUNTRY 

most  beautiful  moral  person  ??  that  the  world  has 
ever  seen.  Hence,  too,  the  obsession  of  victory  as 
a  sort  of  metaphysical  conception,  an  end  in  itself, 
which  led  to  a  disastrous  refusal  to  count  the  cost  of 
victory  or  to  consider  its  practical  results.  And 
now  that  the  victory  has  been  won,  French  good 
sense  reasserts  itself,  too  late,  in  the  declaration  of 
M.  Clemenceau  that  it  is  only  a  Pyrrhic  victory  for 
France. 

Probably  in  no  country  is  the  level  of  individual 
intelligence  so  high  as  in  France ;  certainly  in  none 
is  the  interest  in  intellectual  matters  so  widespread. 
The  contrast  with  England  in  this  regard  is  very 
marked.  In  England  knowledge  and  intellect  are 
regarded  with  suspicion  by  the  majority  of  people 
and  any  manifestation  of  them  is  bad  form  in  polite 
society.  If  a  "  gentleman  "  happens  to  be  learned 
or  intellectual,  it  is  his  business  to  hide  the  fact  and 
pretend  to  be  interested  in  golf  scores  or  cricketing 
records.  The  arid  waste,  of  the  London  suburbs  is 
weekly  refreshed  by  numerous  periodical  publica- 
tions chiefly  devoted  to  the  movements  of  titled 
people  and  to  photographs  of  duchesses  and  their 
babies.  Such  papers  would  have  no  readers  in 
France,  where  nobody  knows  the  name  of  a  duke 
unless  he  should  happen  to  be  remarkable  for  some- 
thing else  than  his  title,  but  where  the  names  of 
great  artists,  great  writers,  great  savants,  and 
great  men  of  science  are  household  words.  The 
only  aristocracy  that  counts  in  France  is  the  intel- 
lectual aristocracy.  When  in  England  has  any 
great  man  o|  letters  been  the  object  of  popular 
adoration  like  tHat  given  to  Victor  Hugo  and 
Beranger,  who  could  hardly  walk  the  streets  of 
Paris  without  being  mobbed  ?  Where  except  in 
Paris  would  a  taxi-driver  refuse  to  take  his  fare 
from  a  great  writer,  saying  that  it  was  enough  to 


THE  FRENCH  CHARACTER        19 

have  the  honour  of  driving  Anatole  France  ?  If 
there  were  an  Anatole  France  in  London  no  taxi- 
driver  would  know  him  by  sight.  The  Parisian 
midinette  makes  pilgrimages  to  the  grave  of  the 
original  "  Dame  aux  Camelias "  in  Montmartre 
cemetery  and  lays  violets  on  the  tomb  of  Abelard 
and  Heloise  in  Pere-Lachaise.  Nothing  more 
endears  to  one  the  French  people  than  their 
passionate  cult  of  genius  and  their  immense  respect 
for  intellectual  superiority.  But,  like  all  human 
qualities,  this  respect  for  intellect  has  its  draw- 
backs ;  literature  and  men  of  letters  have  had  too 
great  an  influence  in  France.  Their  influence  is 
one  of  the  causes  of  the  excessive  importance 
attached  to  words  and  to  ideas  in  themselves.  It 
has  led  to  a  notion  that,  when  one  has  had  a  fine 
idea  and  has  expressed  it  in  fine  language,  one  has 
done  all  that  is  necessary.  It  may  be  true  that  the 
success  of  the  Germans  was  in  great  measure  due  to 
their  faculty  for  giving  practical  expression  to  the 
ideas  of  others,  and  that  may  be,  as  the  French  are 
inclined  to  think,  a  proof  of  inferiority.  But  that 
faculty  is  likely  to  prove  more  profitable  in  this 
world  of  hard  facts  than  a  capacity  for  producing 
ideas  without  the  power  of  giving  them  practical 
application.  The  mission  of  the  French  has  been  to 
provide  the  world  with  ideas.  It  is  a  noble  mission 
which  makes  the  existence  of  the  French  more 
important  to  the  world  than  that  of  any  other 
nation;  but  the  practical  application  of  the  ideas 
has  sometimes  been  the  work  of  other  peoples. 

Perhaps  the  excessive  influence  of  the  written  or 
spoken  word  accounts,  at  least  in  part,  for  one  of 
the  greatest  French  paradoxes — the  striking  contrast 
between  individual  and  collective  intelligence. 
All  collectivities  are  less  intelligent  than  most  of  the 
individuals  that  compose  them ;  for  some  reason 

c  2 


20  MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

which  has  never  yet  been  satisfactorily  explained, 
the  intellectual  and  moral  level  of  the  crowd  is  never 
higher,  and  often  lower,  than  that  of  the  least 
intelligent  and  least  moral  individuals  of  which  it  is 
composed.  The  war  has  proved  that.  All  men 
except  the  very  lowest  are  better  than  their  Church 
or  nation.  The  greatest  crimes  in  history  have 
been  committed,  not  by  individuals,  but  by 
Churches  and  States,  and  even  Christians  attribute 
to  their  God  barbarities  of  which  none  of  them 
would  be  individually  capable;  for  gods  have  the 
mentality  of  the  crowd.  All  human  progress  is  due 
to  the  revolt  of  the  individual  against  the  collec- 
tivity; in  other  words,  to  the  revolt  of  reason 
against  faith.  Faith  is  essentially  an  attribute  of 
the  crowd  and  the  faith  of  each  individual  really 
depends  on  that  of  the  others.  Hence  the  extra- 
ordinary manifestations  of  collective  credulity 
which  appear  at  all  periods  of  great  tension,  such 
as  the  year  1000  and  the  recent  war.  The  myth  of 
the  Russians  in  England  was  a  striking  example 
which  showed  that  tHe  mentality  of  the  crowd  is 
much  the  same  in  the  twentieth  century  as  it  was 
in  the  tenth.  Nowhere  is  this  contrast  between 
individual  and  collective  intelligence  so  marked  as 
in  France.  Whereas  the  French  are  individually 
more  intelligent  than  any  other  people  and  are 
conspicuous  for  their  good  sense,  they  are  collec- 
tively inferior  in  both  qualities  to  some  other 
peoples  whose  individual  level  is  lower  than  theirs. 
This  explains  certain  phenomena  in  French  politics 
which  invariably  puzzle  the  foreigner  with  a  know- 
ledge of  France,  who  cannot  understand  how  people 
so  intelligent  and  sensible  individually  can  be  so 
easily  led  astray  by  political  will-o'-the-wisps  and 
induced  to  forget  realities  in  the  pursuit  of 
abstractions. 


THE  FRENCH  CHARACTER        21 

The  French  respect  for  intellect  is  perhaps  a 
manifestation  of  their  essentially  democratic  spirit. 
More  than  any  other  people  they  judge  a  man  by 
his  capacities  rather  than  by  the  accidents  of  birth 
or  fortune.  They  are  remarkably  free  from  the 
snobbery  which  is  so  prominent  a  characteristic  of 
the  English  and  the  Americans ;  there  is  snobisme 
in  France,  but  that  is  not  the  same  thing.  What 
there  is  not  is  the  ludicrous  respect  for  titles  and 
descent.  Here,  however,  one  must  distinguish. 
One  of  the  greatest  obstacles  to  the  real  under- 
standing of  France  is  the  great  difference  between 
the  various  classes  on  the  one  hand  and  the  various 
parts  of  the  country  on  the  other.  The  ancient 
provinces,  abolished  legally,  survive  in  fact  and 
are  inhabited  by  different  races.  The  old  natural 
patriotism — the  attachment  of  a  man  to  the  village 
or  the  town  or  the  province  where  he  was  born — 
has  not  been  eradicated  by  the  mystical  patriotism 
invented  by  the  Revolution.1  Again,  in  no  country 
is  the  difference  between  the  classes  so  great  as  in 
France;  the  gulf  between  the  bourgeoisie  and  the 
proletariat  Ls  so  wide  that  they  are  almost  like  two 
nations.  For  these  reasons  it  is  very  difficult  to 
generalise  about  the  French  character.  A  common 
civilisation,  common  political  institutions,  and  a 
common  educational  system  have  produced  certain 
characteristics  which  may  be  called  national,  since 
they  are  prevalent  all  over  France,  but  even  they 
are  not  universal.  No  true  judgment  can  be 
formed  about  France  without  taking  into  ac- 
count the  regional  and  class  differences.  One 
has  to  ask  not  merely  whether  a  man  is  a  French- 
man, but  also  from  what  part  of  France  he 
comes  and  whether  he  is  a  bourgeois,  a  peasant, 
or  a  workman.  To  give  an  example,  the  question 
1  See  page  174. 


22  MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

whether  the  French  are  a  sober  or  a  drunken  people 
cannot  be  answered  by  a  simple  affirmative  or 
negative.  In  the  wine-growing  districts  they  are 
sober  on  the  whole,  and  what  drunkenness  there 
has  been  was  chiefly  due  to  absinthe,  the  manufac- 
ture of  which  is  now  suppressed.  In  Normandy, 
Brittany,  and  French  Flanders,  which  have  the 
misfortune  to  have  no  wine,  drunkenness  is  very 
prevalent.  For  wine  maketh  glad  the  heart  of 
man,  but  spirits  make  him  drunk  and  too  much 
beer  makes  him  stupid. 

One  of  the  mistakes  most  often  made  by 
foreigners  is  that  of  identifying  France  with  Paris. 
In  fact,  Paris  is  strangely  unlike  the  rest  of  France 
and  the  Parisian  is  a  type  apart,  very  different 
from  other  Frenchmen.  He  that  knows  only  Paris 
does  not  know  France.  Parisians  are  recruited 
from  every  part  of  France ;  every  one  of  the  races 
that  make  up  the  French  people  is  represented 
among  them  and  there  is  a  constant  immigration 
into  Paris  from  the  provinces.  If  the  popu- 
lation of  Paris  (the  city  within  the  fortifications) 
rose  from  1,851,792  in  1872  to  2,888,110  in  1911, 
the  increase  was  certainly  not  due  to  excess  of 
births  over  deaths,  which  is  smaller  in  Paris  than 
in  France  generally — indeed,  there  is  sometimes  in 
Paris  an  excess  of  deaths  over  births.  It  was  due 
to  immigration  from  France  itself,  for  the  foreign 
population  of  the  department  of  the  Seine  was 
actually  slightly  smaller  in  1911  than  it  had  been 
in  1886.  In  the  second  generation  at  least  the 
provincials  that  settle  in  Paris  become  Parisians — 
indeed,  the  immigrants  themselves  often  undergo 
the  change  and  become  indistinguishable  from 
"  Parisiens  de  Paris."  The  faculty  of  assimilation  , 
which  is  a  characteristic  of  France  as  a  whole  is 
peculiarly  strong  in  Paris.  Of  course,  no  country 
is  really  represented  by  its  capital.  Since  the 


THE  FRENCH  CHARACTER        23 

capital  is  the  seat  of  government  and  the  centre  of 
pleasure-seeking,  the  proportion  of  wealthy  people 
is  always  much  larger  in  the  capital  than  elsewhere, 
especially  of  wealthy  people  with  no  occupation. 
Nowhere  in  England  is  there  so  large  an  idle  class 
as  in  London.  In  every  capital  there  is  an  ex- 
ceptionally large  number  of  parasites  and  hangers- 
on  of  the  ruling  classes  and  the  rich  and  a  large 
miscellaneous  and  more  or  less  worthless  popula- 
tion. The  capital  is  often  the  spoiled  child  of  the 
Government;  at  any  rate  it  comes  in  for  most  of 
the  official  fetes  and  functions.  Perhaps  this  is 
the  reason  why  the  capital  of  a  country  is  usually 
more  patriotic  than  the  rest ;  it  may  be  that  London 
tends  to  be  Imperialist  and  Paris  to  be  Chauvinist 
because  the  Londoners  and  the  Parisians  see  most 
of  the  outward  pomp  and  show  of  imperialism  and 
militarism. 

Nowhere  is  the  contrast  between  the  country 
and  its  capital  so  marked  as  in  France,  yet 
nowhere  has  the  capital  so  much  power  and 
influence.  Paris  is  the  heart  of  France  in  a  sense 
in  which  no  other  capital  is  the  heart  of  the 
country.  It  is  also,  or  claims  to  be,  to  a  great 
extent  the  brain  of  France.  The  whole  intellectual 
and  artistic  life  of  France  has  been  concentrated  in 
Paris,  just  as  the  whole  of  French  government  and 
administration  has  been  centralised  there.  During 
the  nineteenth  century  Paris  completely  dominated 
France  politically  and  intellectually.  It  was  Paris 
that  dethroned  Charles  X  on  July  29,  1830,  Louis- 
Philippe  on  February  24,  1848,  and  Napoleon  III 
on  September  4,  1870.  It  was  Paris  that  set  up  the 
Second  and  Third  Republics.  To  this  day  Paris 
governs  France  through  the  centralised  administra- 
tion.1 The  dictatorship  of  Paris  has  on  the  whole 
done  more  harm  than  good.  It  is  said  that,  when 

1  See  pages  77-86 


24  MY  SECOND  COUNTRY 

Bluchers  officers  expressed  a  desire  to  destroy 
Paris,  he  replied  to  them  :  "  Laissez-la;  la  France 
en  crevera."  Blucher  may  have  exaggerated,  but 
without  doubt  the  influence  of  Paris  has  often  been 
mischievous.  For  the  Parisians  have  many  of  the 
defects  which  have  often  been  erroneously  attributed 
to  the  French  people  as  a  whole — or  rather  a  large 
part  of  the  Parisian  population  has.  There  is  in 
Paris  a  large  population  that  is  impulsive,  frivolous 
and  emotional.  Paris  always  has  been  more 
Chauvinist  and  bellicose  than  any  other  part  of 
France.  Paris  is  chiefly  responsible  for  most  of  the 
wars  in  which  France  has  been  involved  since  1815. 
The  Parisian  boulevardiers,  the  audiences  at 
Parisian  music-halls,  are  usually  militarist  in 
sympathy — "  cocardier,"  as  the  French  say.  Until 
the  last  decade  of  the  nineteentE  century  even  the 
Parisian  proletariat  was  always  clamouring  for  a 
spirited  foreign  policy ;  it  has  changed  to  a  great 
extent,  thanks  to  the  influence  of  Socialism,  but 
the  Parisian  bourgeoisie  is  still  more  Chauvinist 
than  any  other.  And  in  Paris,  as  in  every  capital, 
the  proportion  of  bourgeois,  and  in  particular  of  the 
idle  rich  class,  to  the  population  is,  of  course, 
larger  than  anywhere  else  in  France.  The  influence 
of  the  Parisian  Press — of  the  "  great  papers/'  that 
is  to  say — is  very  bad.  It  is  to  a  large  extent 
corrupt  and  its  news  is  often  tendencious  or  even 
false.  Newspapers  have  far  more  influence  by 
means  of  their  news  than  by  their  leading  articles. 
The  reader,  who  knows  the  politics  of  the  paper,  is 
on  his  defence  against  a  leading  article ;  he  has  no 
defence  against  news,  lor  he  has  no  means  of 
knowing  whether  the  facts  have  been  distorted  or 
suppressed  or  even  invented.  Some  of  the  leading 
Parisian  papers  do  not  hesitate  deliberately  fo 
concoct  news ;  I  know  a  man  who  left  a  Parisian 


THE  FRENCH  CHARACTER        25 

news  agency  after  two  or  three  days  because  he 
was  asked  to  invent  telegrams  from  abroad  in  order 
to  support  a  particular  policy.  It  is,  of  course, 
the  Parisian  papers  which  are  quoted  abroad,  but 
they  are  far  from  representing  French  opinion  as  a 
whole.  That  is  one  reason  why  France  is  so  often 
wrongly  judged  in  other  countries.  The  great 
Parisian  papers  represent  Parisian  bourgeois 
opinion  and  high  finance.  Since  1899  the  political 
influence  of  Paris  has  been  on  the  wane.  Wnen 
M.  Loubet  was  elected  President  of  the  Republic  in 
that  year,  Paris  was  violently  anti-Dreyfusard  and 
reactionary.  The  first  municipal  elections  after  his 
accession  to  office  resulted  in  a  sweeping  reactionary 
victory  in  Paris  and  in  the  defeat  of  the  re- 
actionaries in  every  other  large  town ;  that  was  the 
first  symptom  of  the  revolt  of  the  provinces  against 
the  dictatorship  of  Paris,  which  has  since  developed. 
It  has  been  particularly  marked  in  the  South  of 
France,  which  refuses  to  take  its  orders  from  Paris. 
Indeed,  during  the  Waldeck-Rousseau  and  Combes 
Ministries  (1899-1905)  the  provinces  began  to 
impose  their  political  will  on  Paris  and  the  power 
of  the  centralised  administration  became  con- 
siderably diminished.  The  deputies  received 
instructions  from  their  constituents  which  they 
were  obliged  to  follow,  and  they  in  their  turn 
exercised  a  control  over  the  Executive  such  as  had 
never  before  been  known  in  France.  Since  1905 
the  Executive  has  regained  its  power,  but  the  pro- 
vinces still  refuse  to  take  their  politics  from  Paris. 
This  change  is  due  to  the  increase  of  the  industrial 
population,  to  ^he  growth  of  the  large  towns,  to 
the  improved  communications  which  have  enabled 
the  provinces  to  be  better  informed,  to  the  develop- 
ment of  the  provincial  Press,  especially  the  great 
provincial  dailies,  and  to  a  growing  opinion  in 


26  MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

favour  of  decentralisation.  Intellectual  and  artistic 
decentralisation  has  also  begun  and  it  seems  likely 
that  the  control  of  France  by  Paris  will,  before 
long,  be  a  thing  of  the  past.  It  will  be  a  change 
for  the  better.  Much  that  has  been  mistaken  in 
French  policy  has  been  due  to  the  impulsiveness 
and  waywardness  of  the  capital  and  will  be  cor- 
rected by  the  solid  good  sense  of  the  provinces. 
The  South  will  continue  to  have  great  influence 
on  France.  Languedoc  in  particular  has  always 
produced  men  combining  idealism  with  practical 
capacity  and  good  sense — perhaps  more  great  men 
have  come  from  Languedoc  than  from  any  other 
province. 

The  democratic  spirit  is  a  matter  about  which 
one  must  not  generalise  too  much ;  for  it  is  a 
characteristic  rather  of  the  peasantry  and  the 
proletariat  than  of  the  bourgeoisie.  Here  it  may 
be  said  that  the  term  bourgeoisie  is  used  throughout 
this  book  in  its  strict  sense,  namely,  as  a  descrip- 
tion of  all  that  are  not  either  peasants  or  wage- 
earners.  The  bourgeois  is  a  man  who  owns  property 
as  distinct  from  a  man  who  lives  entirely  on  his 
earnings.  The  peasant  may,  of  course,  and  usually 
does  in  France,  own  property,  but  the  peasantry  is 
a  class  by  itself  with  its  own  characteristics.  Under 
the  old  regime  the  bourgeoisie  was  also  dis- 
tinguished from  the  noblesse,  but  the  latter  class 
has  ceased  to  count  in  France,  except  so  far  as  it 
has  become  merged  in  the  grande  bourgeoisie — the 
wealthy  financial,  commercial  and  industrial  class. 
Half  the  people  that  profess  nowadays  to  belong  to 
the  noblesse  are  merely  bourgeois  who  were  given 
titles  under  the  Empires  or  the  Restoration,  have 
bought  them  from  the  Pope  or  from  some  minor 
foreign  Sovereign,  or  have  simply  conferred  them 
jipon  themselves.  Moreover,  people  belonging  to  a 


THE  FRENCH  CHARACTER        27 

family  of  which  some  member  was  ennobled  before 
the  Revolution  do  not  hesitate,  when  the  direct  line 
is  extinct,  to  revive  the  title  in  their  own  favour, 
although  they  may  be  only  remote  collateral 
descendants  of  the  original  holder.  Now  that  no 
titles  are  recognised  by  law,  anybody  can  assume 
one;  it  is  said  that  most  of  the  titles  used  by 
gentlemen  in  the  French  Diplomatic  Service  were 
acquired  in  this  simple  fashion.  The  remnant  of 
the  old  noblesse  still  has  certain  characteristics 
which  differ  from  those  of  the  bourgeoisie,  some- 
times for  the  better,  but  it  has  so  completely 
isolated  itself  from  the  life  of  France  by  its  persis- 
tent obscurantism  and  reaction  that  it  need  not  be 
taken  into  account,  and  it  is  really  merged  in  the 
bourgeoisie.  The  bourgeoisie  as  a  whole  is,  then, 
much  less  democratic  than  the  two  other  classes. 
The  tendency  on  the  part  of  the  nouveauoo  riches  to 
call  themselves  counts  or  marquises  is  evidence  of 
that  fact,  but  here  again  one  must  distinguish. 
There  are  really  three  classes  of  bourgeoisie,  the 
upper,  the  middle,  and  the  lower.  The  upper 
bourgeoisie  consists  of  the  great  financiers,  the 
remnant  of  the  noblesse,  and  the  wealthy  capitalists 
generally;  the  middle  bourgeoisie  is  composed  of 
professional  men,  artists,  men  of  letters,  the  higher 
Government  officials,  professors,  and  well-to-do 
rentiers  and  business  men;  in  the  lower  class — the 
petite  bourgeoisie — are  the  small  rentiers  and 
•  tradesmen,  minor  Government  officials,  elemen- 
tary teachers  and  business  employees.  The  very 
small  tradesmen  and  shop  assistants  belong 
rather  to  the  proletariat.  A  large  section  of 
bourgeois  society  is  what  would  be  called  in 
England  or  America  Bohemian,  by  a  misuse  of 
that  term ;  that  is  to  say,  it  is  essentially 
anti-bourgeois  in  spirit  and  has  freed  itself  from  the 


28  MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

restrictions  of  bourgeois  morality  and  convention. 
In  this  section  the  democratic  spirit  is  very  strong. 
But  the  grand  bourgeois,  the  petit  rentier — the  man 
who  has  scraped  together  enough  to  live  frugally  on 
rent  or  interest — and  a  large  section  of  the  middle 
bourgeoisie  are  intensely  anti-democratic*  It  is  a 
curious  fact,  which  a  French  writer  has  remarked, 
that  there  is  still  in  France  a  prejudice  againsC 
trade  and  commerce — a  prejudice  which  in  its 
origin  is  not  altogether  unreasonable.  The  ambi- 
tion of  every  French  tradesman  is  to  save  enough 
money  to  become  a  rentier  and  live  without 
working.1 

The  democratic  spirit  of  the  peasantry  and  tlie 
proletariat  makes  relations  with  them  easy  and 
pleasant  for  a  bourgeois.  There  is  not  in  France  the 
constraint  between  persons  of  different  classes  which 
makes  their  relations  often  difficult  in  England. 
French  domestic  servants,  for  instance,  are  on  more 
friendly  terms  with  their  employers  than  is  the  case 
in  England ;  they  are  polite  without  being  servile 
and  familiar  without  taking  liberties.  A  Parisian 
workman  can  be  quite  at  his  ease  in  a  bourgeois 
drawing-room  simply  because  he  does  not  regard  a 
bourgeois  as  his  better,  but  treats  him  with  the 
courtesy  due  to  an  equal.  French  manners  have  a 
levelling  tendency.  The  mere  fact  that  one  ad- 
dresses everybody  as  Monsieur,  Madame,  or 
Mademoiselle,  as  the  case  may  be,  tends  to  a  sense 
of  equality,  just  as  the  fact  that  in  England  people 
say  Sir  or  Ma'am  only  fo  their  supposed 
superiors  has  the  opposite  effect.  Manners  and 
social  usages  have  more  importance  than  many 
people  imagine;  tnere  is  at  present  a  deplorable 
tendency  in  England  to  neglect  them  altogether 
and  to  cultivate  rudeness.  The  French  may  be  too 

1  See  page  188, 


THE   FRENCH   CHARACTER       29 

ceremonious,  from  our  point  of  view,  but  it  is 
better  to  exaggerate  in  that  direction  than  in  the 
other.  It  is  not  at  all  an  indifferent  matter  that  in 
France,  when  one  goes  into  a  small  shop,  one  raises 
one's  hat  to  the  lady  behind  the  counter  and  says 
4 "  Good  morning"  to  her;  the  custom  has  an 
immense  social  significance.  Education,  too,  is 
both  better  and  cheaper  in  France  than  in 
England.  The  best  schools  in  France  cost  only 
about  £16  a  year,  with  the  result  that  people  can 
send  their  sons  and  daughters  to  a  Lycee  who  in 
England  could  not  possibly  afford  a  similar  educa- 
tion. The  public  schools  in  France  are  really 
public  and  are  not,  like  the  English  institutions 
miscalled  by  that  name,  nurseries  of  snobbery. 
The  French  Universities  are  equally  inexpensive 
and  democratic,  and  are  available  for  any  boys  and 
girls  whose  parents  can  afford  to  keep  them  without 
earning  their  living  up  to  the  age  of  twenty  or 
thereabouts.  The  consequence  is  that  it  is  much 
more  easy  in  France  than  in  England  for  the  son 
of  a  workman  or  a  peasant  to  rise  to  eminence  in  a 
learned  profession  or  in  politics.  Many  of  the 
leading  French  politicians  have  risen  from  the 
ranks;  for  instance,  M.  Painleve  is  the  son  of  a 
Parisian  artisan  and  M.  Briand  of  a  country 
publican.  M.  Painleve  has  not  only  been  Prime 
Minister  of  France,  but  is  also  one  of  the  most 
eminent  mathematicians  in  Europe,  is  a  member 
of  the  Institute,  and  has  been  a  professor  at  the 
Sor  bonne  and  the  Ecole  Poly  technique. 

Nevertheless,  the  feeling  on  the  part  of  the 
proletariat  that  they  are  not  in  any  way  inferior  to 
the  bourgeois  dees  not  tend  to  bring  the  two 
classes  together.  It  has  the  opposite  effect.  For 
the  workman  knows  that  economically  he  is  not  the 
equal  of  the  bourgeois,  and  his  passion  for  equality 


30  MY   SECOND  COUNTRY 

makes  him  the  more  determined  to  break  down  the 
economic  barrier  that  separates  the  two  classes. 
It  is  no  longer  the  ambition  of  the  French  pro- 
letariat to  become  bourgeois ;  they  have  an  intense 
class  consciousness,  and  their  feeling  against  the 
bourgeoisie  is  often  very  bitter.  The  bitterness  is 
intensified  by  resentment  at  the  way  in  which  too 
many,  though  not  all,  of  those  that  have  come  out 
of  the  proletariat  and  improved  their  social  position 
have  become  completely  bourgeois  in  feeling,  even 
sometimes  the  worst  enemies  of  the  class  from 
which  they  sprang. 

In  the  country  districts  the  sense  of  equality  has 
as  marked  an  influence  as  in  the  towns.  The 
contrast  between  a  French  country  village,  except 
in  certain  backward  districts,  and  an  English  one 
is  very  striking.  In  England  a  whole  village  is 
often  the  property  of  one  man,  who  necessarily 
becomes  the  lord  and  master  of  its  inhabitants; 
nobody  can  even  live  in  it  without  his  permission, 
and  independent  thought  or  action  becomes  an 
impossibility.  In  France  the  peasants  own  their 
land  and  are  independent  of  everybody.  The 
system  of  peasant  proprietorship  has  grave  draw- 
backs, as  we  shall  see  later,  and  I  doubt  whether 
it  can  last,1  but  it  has  the  advantage  over  the 
English  system  of  producing  an  independent  pea- 
santry. The  chateau  and  the  cure  are  as  closely  allied 
in  France  as  are  the  squire  and  the  parson  in  Eng- 
land, but  whereas  the  latter  are  a  formidable  power 
and  sometimes  an  oppressive  tyranny,  the  chateau 
and  the  cure  in  France  are  now  almost  without 
influence,  except  in  the  reactionary  regions  of  the 
West.  In  Brittany,  the  Vendee,  and  in  certain  parts 
of  Normandy  the  chateau  and  the  cure  are  still  a 
power,  because  the  Church  holds  the  people.  But 

1  See  page  220. 


THE  FRENCH  CHARACTER       31 

the  power  of  the  chateau  cannot  exist  anywhere 
unless  the  Church  is  able  to  bolster  it  up.  And  in 
the  greater  part  of  rural  France  the  Church  has  lost 
its  hold  :  the  peasants  on  the  whole  are  the  most 
anti-clerical  part  of  the  population,  no  doubt 
because  they  have  suffered  most  in  the  past  from 
the  rule  of  the  clergy. 

One  of  the  paradoxes  of  the  French  character  is 
the  combination  with  a  democratic  spirit  of  respect 
for  authority,  which  is  manifested,  for  example,  in 
the  reverence  of  many  Frenchmen  for  Government 
officials  and  for  persons  holding  any  public  posi- 
tion. A  prefect,  a  senator,  or  a  deputy  in  France  is 
a  sort  of  minor  deity,  who  is  feared  and  respected 
even  if  he  be  not  liked.  This  reverence  for  authority 
is,  I  think,  a  legacy  of  Catholicism — one  of  the 
many  impressions  which  centuries  of  Catholic 
tradition  have  made  on  the  French  character  and 
which  still  survive  in  a  France  where  Catholicism 
has  been  abandoned  by  the  great  majority  of  the 
people.  French  anti-clerical  papers  will  talk,  for 
instance,  of  the  necessity  of  preserving  the 
"  hierarchy  "  of  the  Administration.  The  respect 
for  authority  has  greatly  diminished  during  the 
last  quarter  of  a  century,  especially  among  the 
proletariat ;  its  decline  dates  from  the  secularisation 
of  the  national  schools  in  1882,  which  has  had  a 
great  effect  in  many  ways  on  the  French  character. 
But  it  is  still  too  prevalent,  and  by  a  natural 
reaction  respect  for  authority  leads  to  frondisme  : 
the  French  are  very  prone  to  try  to  evade  any  law 
that  they  can  evade  with  impunity,  just  as  the 
schoolboy  will  evade  the  rules  if  he  is  sure  that  he 
will  not  be  found  out.  There  is  nothing  that  most 
Frenchmen  like  so  much  as  to  break  a  law;  they 
feel  that  they  are  getting  one  back  on  their  masters. 
Respect  for  authority  also  leads  to  a  lack  of  civism 


32  MY  SECOND  COUNTRY 

—too  often  Frenchmen  do  not  sufficiently  regard 
the  general  welfare  of  the  community.  A  French 
friend  of  mine,  who  is  a  Catholic  and  a  reactionary, 
was  rilled  with  admiration  after  a  visit  to  London 
for  the  regulation  of  the  traffic  by  the  police,  and 
cited  it  to  me  as  an  example  of  English  respect  for 
authority  and  its  beneficial  results.  I  told  him,  of 
course,  that  it  was  nothing  of  the  kind — that  the 
reason  why  drivers  in  London  stopped  when  the 
policeman  told  them  to  was  not  that  they  had  any 
particular  respect  for  the  policeman  as  a  representa- 
tive of  authority,  but  that  they  recognised,  even  if 
unconsciously,  that  the  regulation  of  the  traffic  is 
ultimately  to  the  advantage  of  everybody.  This  is 
civism,  not  respect  for  authority,  and  it  is  much 
less  common  in  France.  A  few  years  ago  measures 
were  taken  to  regulate  the  traffic  in  Paris,  and  they 
have  had  some  success.  The  policeman  wields  a 
white  baton,  no  doubt  as  a  symbol  of  authority, 
and  he  is  obeyed  as  a  rule,  because  disobedience 
involves  a  penalty;  but  if  a  driver  can  manage  to 
slip  through  without  being  noticed  by  the  police- 
man, he  will  do  so.  This  is  typical  of  a  too 
common  French  attitude  towards  regulations,  even 
if  they  are  obviously  to  the  general  advantage. 
That  attitude  is  not  a  symptom  of  love  of  indivi- 
dual liberty,  but  of  lawlessness  arising  from  a 
natural  dislike  of  the  authority  to  which  submission 
is  too  readily  given  when  it  cannot  be  evaded.  It 
has  a  parallel  in  the  anti-clericalism  of  mediaeval 
tales,  the  writers  of  which  took  their  revenge 
against  their  hated  despots  in  the  only  way  open 
to  them.  Individual  liberty  can  be  obtained  only 
by  voluntary  discipline  and  readiness  to  accept 
regulations  of  general  utility  made  by  all  in  the 
interest  of  all.  The  true  liberal  will  revolt  against 
any  exercise  of  authority,  but  will  spontaneously 


THE  FRENCH  CHARACTER        33 

make  whatever  slight  restrictions  on  his  own  liberty 
are  necessary  to  secure  the  liberty  of  others,  know- 
ing that  in  the  end  he  himself  will  benefit  by  what 
is  to  the  interest  of  all. 

The  French  have  been  too  ready  to  put  up  with 
the  exercise  of  authority  and  to  submit  to  abuses 
and  even  oppression.  This  is  partly  the  result  of 
their  remarkable  patience  and  endurance,  which 
have  been  so  conspicuous  during  the  war;  they 
have  perhaps  more  capacity  for  endurance  than  any 
other  people.  One  realises  how  patient  the  French 
are  when  one  sees  them  waiting  for  hours  without 
complaint  to  see  a  Minister  or  a  deputy  or  even  a 
doctor ;  the  impatient  Englishman,  if  he  consented 
to  wait  at  all,  would  be  fuming  the  whole  time. 
This  patience  is  a  quality  which  has  stood  the 
French  in  good  stead,  but  it  can  be,  and  sometimes 
is,  carried  to  excess.  Some  years  ago  I  arrived  at 
the  Gare  St.  Lazare  at  Paris  two  or  three  days 
before  the  August  Bank  Holiday  about  half  an  hour 
before  the  time  of  my  train.  I  had  sent  my  luggage 
an  hour  in  advance,  but  when  I  got  to  the 
station  it  was  still  in  the  courtyard.  There  was  a 
long  queue  of  people  waiting  to  have  their  luggage 
weighed  and  registered  and  I  saw  that  I  had  no 
chance  of  catching  the  train  at  the  rate  at  which 
things  were  moving.  I  went  into  the  luggage-hall 
and  saw  that  of  four  weighing  machines  only  one 
was  being  used,  which  accounted  for  the  delay.  I 
protested  so  vigorously  that  the  station-master  was 
sent  for  and  immediately  ordered  all  the  four 
machines  to  be  put  into  use.  The  other  passengers 
were  so  grateful  to  me  that  they  insisted  on  my 
luggage  being  weighed  first,  quite  out  of  my  turn. 
The  strange  thing  was  that,  although  some  of  them 
had  been  there  for  a  couple  of  hours,  not  one  had 
thought  of  doing  what  I  did ;  but  for  my  English 


34  MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

impatience,  three-fourths  of  them  would  have 
missed  their  trains,  and  then  there  would  probably 
have  been  a  small  riot.  Now  this  incident  is  typical 
of  the  French  attitude  towards  authority ;  the  French 
will  too  often  endure  abuses  for  years  without 
making  any  effective  protest,  and  when  at  last  the 
situation  becomes  absolutely  unbearable  they  will 
break  out  and  smash  up  everything.  That  is  the 
reason  why  there  have  been  so  many  revolutions 
in  France ;  nobody  thinks  of  making  reforms  until 
it  is  too  late  and  a  clean  sweep  has  become  inevit- 
able. 

It  seems  to  me  that  civism  is  the  only  reasonable 
form  of  patriotism ;  it  is  based  on  good  sense — on 
recognition  of  the  fact  that  the  advantage  of  all  is 
the  advantage  of  each — and  is  a  form  of  enlightened 
self-interest.  And,  as  I  have  said,  it  is  essential  to 
liberty.  Nobody  should  be  more  willing  to  admit 
the  importance  of  civism  than  the  Anarchist  or 
"  libertaire,"  for  it  can  be  possible  to  get  rid  of  all 
compulsion  only  if  and  when  everybody  recognises 
the  necessity  of  a  certain  amount  of  voluntary  self- 
sacrifice  for  the  common  good.  The  lack  of  civism 
in  France  is  at  once  the  result  of  authority  and  a 
difficulty  in  the  way  of  getting  rid  of  it.  There  is 
no  paradox  more  striking  than  the  unwillingness 
of  too  many  Frenchmen  to  make  small  sacrifices, 
pecuniary  or  other,  in  the  general  interest  and  their 
willingness  to  sacrifice  their  lives  for  an  abstraction 
called  "  la  patrie."  This  time,  it  is  true,  war  was 
declared  on  France,  but  that  was  not  the  case  in 
1870  or  on  many  other  previous  occasions,  and  even 
this  time,  after  the  invasion  had  been  checked,  too 
many  people  in  France  talked  as  though  somehow 
or  other  "  la  patrie  "  would  continue  to  exist  even 
if  there  were  no  Frenchmen  left.  So  did  a  witty 
prelate  explain  his  belief  in  the  indefectibility  of 


THE  FRENCH  CHARACTER        35 

the  Church  by  pointing  out  that  the  Church  would 
still  exist  even  if  it  were  reduced  to  the  Pope  and 
one  old  woman. 

Respect  for  authority  is  naturally  incompatible 
with  a  right  appreciation  of  the  value  of  liberty. 
Napoleon  was  probably  right  in  saying  that  the 
French  attached  more  importance  to  equality  than 
to  liberty,  but  that  is  less  true  now,  especially  so  far 
as  the  proletariat  is  concerned.  "  Libertaire  "  or 
liberal  ideas  have  made  immense  progress  in  the 
proletariat  in  recent  years  and  are  now  dominant 
among  trade  unionists.  There  is  actually  less  poli- 
tical liberty  in  France  than  in  England,  but  there 
is  perhaps  more  social  liberty,  except  in  the  case 
of  unmarried  girls  of  the  bourgeoisie — or  at  least  I 
should  have  said  so  five  years  ago,  but  the  war  has 
made  such  radical  changes  in  England  that  I  doubt 
whether  it  is  still  true.  The  French  have,  however, 
a  strong  dislike  of  prying  into  other  people's  affairs 
or  of  allowing  other  people  to  pry  into  theirs.  An 
example  of  this  is  the  privacy  of  divorce  cases  :  a 
divorce  suit  is  tried  in  camera,  and  it  is  illegal  to 
publish  anything  about  it  except  the  fact  of  the 
divorce,  if  and  when  it  is  granted.  The  law 
properly  recognises  that  a  difference  between  hus- 
band and  wife  is  a  private  matter  which  does  not 
concern  the  public.  This  attitude  tends  to  social 
freedom,  as  does  the  disposition  of  a  great  many 
French  people  to  regard  morality  as  largely  a 
matter  of  taste.  The  remark  of  Felicie  Nanteuil  in 
Anatole  France's  "  Histoire  Comique  " — "  Je  com- 
prends  tout,  mais  il  y  a  des  choses  qui  me  de- 
goutent  "—is  typical  of  a  common  French  attitude 
and  is  perhaps  after  all  the  last  word  on  the  matter. 

One  of  the  greatest  qualities  of  the  French  is  their 
intellectual  sincerity ;  no  people  is  more  willing  to 
recognise  facts.  Perhaps  this  is  one  of  the  greatest 

D  2 


36  MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

differences  between  the  French  and  the  English, 
for  one  of  our  national  failings  is  unwillingness  to 
recognise  facts.  The  French,  too,  realise  more 
generally  than  we  do  that  it  is  not  enough  to  say 
what  one  thinks  :  one  must  also,  to  be  sincere,  have 
adequate  reasons  for  thinking  it.  The  difference 
between  the  French  and  the  English  character  in 
this  regard  makes  the  candour  of  many  French 
authors  shocking  to  many  English  readers.  The 
Frenchman,  being  essentially  a  rationalist,  will  not 
take  for  granted  even  the  most  generally  accepted 
beliefs;  he  asks  what  is  the  reason  for  them. 
Voltaire  is  the  typical  example  of  the  French  in- 
tellect at  its  best ;  Jean- Jacques  Rousseau,  who  was 
not  of  course  a  Frenchman,  has  had  great  influence 
in  France,  but  it  is  always  the  influence  of  Voltaire 
that  returns  after  every  reaction.  That  is  the  true 
French  tradition,  the  natural  tendency  of  French 
intellectual  development.  The  development  has 
been  momentarily  checked  from  time  to  time  by 
such  movements  as  Romanticism  and  Bergsonism, 
but  they  have  not  been  and  never  will  be  lasting. 
Whatever  may  be  their  temporary  aberrations,  the 
French  in  the  majority  remain  at  bottom  sceptical, 
rationalist  and  intellectualist.  They  are  the  least 
sentimental  of  peoples,  which  is  not  to  say  that 
they  always  or  even  usually  lack  sentiment,  but 
their  sense  of  realities  keeps  them  from  sentimen- 
talism.  That  is  true  in  varying  degrees  of  all  the 
so-called  Latin  peoples;  the  Germans,  the  Ameri- 
cans, and  the  English  are  the  sentimental  peoples 
of  the  world.  The  French,  too,  are  less  emotional 
than  is  sometimes  supposed — certainly  less  so  than 
the  Americans,  the  most  emotional  people  in  the 
world.  They  are  often  excitable,  but  that  is  not 
the  same  thing.  The  Frenchman  of  the  North  and 
the  Norman  are  calm,  shrewd  and  prudent,  and 


THE  FRENCH  CHARACTER        37 

those  qualities  are  to  be  found  all  over  France.  Paris, 
as  has  been  said,  is  more  emotional  and  impulsive 
than  any  other  part  of  France;  hence  the  mistake 
in  this  regard  often  made  by  foreigners,  who  are 
inclined  to  judge  France  by  Paris. 

To  sum  up,  the  French  are  above  all  an  intellec- 
tual race;  there  is  more  clear  thinking  in  France 
than  in  any  other  country  and  the  marvellous 
lucidity  of  French  prose,  the  finest  in  the  world,  is 
the  result  of  clear  thinking.  They  also  possess  in  a 
marked  degree  that  most  necessary  of  qualities — 
imagination.  The  greatest  masters  of  prose  fiction 
are  to  be  found  in  France  and  in  Russia,  and,  from 
Moliere  onwards,  French  comedy  has  had  no  rival. 
But  in  poetry — at  any  rate  modern  poetry — the 
French  are  inferior  to  the  English,  although  France 
produced  in  the  nineteenth  century  at  least  three 
great  poets — Victor  Hugo,  Baudelaire  and  Verlaine. 
The  modern  French  language  is  less  poetical  than 
was  the  French  of  the  sixteenth  century,  for  the 
language  was  unhappily  impoverished  in  the  seven- 
teenth and  eighteenth  centuries  by  the  French 
Academy,  which  purged  it  of  words  supposed  to  be 
insufficiently  classical.  It  is  this  that  makes 
modern  French  the  most  difficult  language  in  the 
world  to  write  well,  even  for  Frenchmen  them- 
selves ;  the  English  language,  being  much  richer  in 
words,  is  more  easy  to  manage.  Nevertheless, 
there  is  more  good  writing  in  France  than  in 
England. 

The  notion  that  the  French  as  a  nation  are  un- 
trustworthy, which  has  been  and  perhaps  still  is 
prevalent  in  England,  is  false.  Their  habit  of 
paying  compliments  makes  us  think  them  insincere, 
but  it  is  a  mere  convention  of  formal  politeness, 
which  means  no  more  than  "Dear  Sir  "  at  the 
beginning  of  a  letter,  and  the  French  themselves 


38  MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

attach  no  importance  to  it.  Frenchmen  can  be  as 
loyal  as  anybody,  and  perhaps  women  on  the  whole 
are  more  straightforward  in  France  than  in  Eng- 
land, where,  by  all  accounts,  the  minx — not  to  say 
the  "  demi-vierge  " — is  at  present  too  common.  One 
failing  too  prevalent  in  France,  especially  in  the 
bourgeoisie,  is  want  of  moral  courage ;  on  the  other 
hand,  there  is  no  country  where  physical  bravery 
is  so  general.  Another  failing  is  vanity,  collective 
rather  than  individual;  it  is  "la  gloriole"  that 
has  too  often  made  the  French  run  after  the  mirage 
of  glory.  Chauvinism  is  a  manifestation  of 
national  vanity,  just  as  British  Imperialism  is  a 
manifestation  of  our  overweening  national  pride. 
We  have  never  made  conquests  for  the  sake  of 
glory,  which  has  no  attractions  for  us,  but  we  firmly 
believe  that  we  are  destined  by  God  to  rule  the 
world.  It  is,  no  doubt,  for  that  reason  that  we  were 
so  indignant  when  our  German  cousins,  who  resem- 
ble us  in  many  ways,  began  to  hold  the  same  belief 
about  themselves.  "Rule  Britannia!'1  asserts 
more  arrogant  claims  than  "  Deutschland  iiber 
Alles,"  and  there  is  no  French  national  song  resem- 
bling either  of  them.  The  note  of  the  Marseillaise 
is  not  the  domination  of  other  countries  by  France, 
nor  even  primarily  patriotic  devotion,  but  "  glory  " 
to  be  won  by  a  war  for  liberty  against  tyrants — 
"  Libert e,  Liberte  cherie,  combats  avec  tes  defen- 
seurs  !  '  It  is  for  France  as  the  country  of  the 
Revolution  that  the  appeal  is  made  to  "  Amour 
sacre  de  la  patrie."  So,  too,  in  the  chorus  of  the 
"  Chant  du  Depart  "  France  is  identified  with  the 
Republic  : 

"  La  R6publique  nous  appelle, 
Sachons  vaincre  ou  sachons  perir  ; 
Un  Fran<jais  doit  vivre  pour  elle, 
Pour  elle  un  Fran<?ais  doit  mourir." 


THE  FRENCH  CHARACTER        39 

Ever  since  the  Revolution  French  Chauvinism 
has  been  tinged  with  the  revolutionary  ideal  of  a 
crusade  against  despotism  based  on  the  identifica- 
tion of  the  cause  of  France  with  the  cause  of  liberty. 
Even  the  late  M.  Paul  Deroulede,  that  apostle  of 
"  La  Revanche,"  was  influenced  by  this  spirit  in 
his  most  bellicose  incitements,  and  his  notion  of 
victory  and  its  consequences  was  very  different  from 
that  of  some  contemporary  French  Chauvinists. 
For  example,  take  these  lines  in  one  of  his  mili- 
tary songs : 

"  Car  nous  nous  montrerons  des  vainqueurs  au  cceur  juste 
Et  nous  ne  reprendrons  que  ce  qui  nous  fut  pris." 

After  the  victory  of  "  La  Revanche  "  he  anticipates 
"  la  paix  calme,  sereine,  auguste,"  and  the  end  of 
war : 

"  Et  nous  ne  voudrons  plus  qu'on  parle  de  bataille, 
Et  nous  desapprendrons  la  guerre  a  nos  enfants." 

Such  illusions  have  not  been  limited  to  France 
during  the  last  five  years;  we  have  heard  a  great 
deal  in  England  of  "the  war  to  end  war"— the 
distinguished  author  of  that  phrase  must  be  sorry 
that  he  coined  it.  But  the  clever  exploitation  of 
the  revolutionary  side  of  Chauvinism  in  France 
during  the  war  was  an  important  factor  in  its  pro- 
longation ;  the  national  vanity  was  flattered  by  the 
belief  that  France  was  once  more  fighting  for  liberty 
against  tyranny.  The  French  people  is  now  learn- 
ing that  the  persons  who  induced  it  to  make  such 
terrible  sacrifices  in  that  belief  had  other  aims. 


CHAPTER^!! 

PROBLEMS   OF  RECONSTRUCTION 

FRANCE  has  always  been  primarily  an  agricultural 
country.  Until  recently  the  majority  of  the  popu- 
lation— at  one  time  the  great  majority — was 
engaged  in  agriculture,  and  even  now,  in  spite  of 
the  steady  exodus  from  the  country  into  the  towns 
which  has  been  going  on  for  more  than  twenty 
years,  the  rural  population  is  about  48  per  cent,  of 
the  whole.  The  natural  resources  of  Frsnce  are 
immense  and  have  not  even  yet  been  fully  turned 
to  account.  Not  only  is  it  one  of  the  most  fertile 
countries  in  the  world,  but  the  great  variety  of 
climates  to  be  found  within  its  borders  enables 
every  kind  of  agricultural  product  to  be  grown. 
One  of  the  most  valuable  of  those  products  is  wine. 
French  wine  is  the  best  in  the  world  and  is  likely 
to  remain  so,  thanks  to  the  natural  qualities  of  the 
soil  and  the  skill  of  the  wine-growers.  Every  real 
connoisseur  of  wine  in  every  country  prefers  a  fine 
burgundy  or  a  fine  bordeaux  to  any  other  drink  yet 
known  to  man.  The  discoveries  of  Pasteur  not 
only  saved  the  French  vines  from  destruction,  but 
also  enabled  the  wine-growing  area  to  be  extended. 
Wine  is  now  produced  in  thirty-two  of  the  eighty- 
eight  French  departments,  and  the  wine-growing 
districts  are  the  most  prosperous  of  the  whole 
country. 

4 


PROBLEMS  OF  RECONSTRUCTION  41 

Within  recent  years  French  industry  has  been 
greatly  developed,  although  Protection  has  done 
much  to  hinder  its  development.  Many  French- 
men wish  France  to  become  a  great  industrial 
country  in  emulation  of  Great  Britain,  Gernmny, 
and  the  United  States ;  the  huge  fortunes  amassed 
from  industry  excite  their  envy.  I  cannot  believe 
that  they  are  right.  The  general  prosperity  of  a 
country  is  not  increased  by  the  concentration  of 
enormous  wealth  in  the  ha"nds  of  a  few  individuals. 
Individual  fortunes  are  smaller  in  France  than  in 
England,  and  even  the  total  annual  income  of  the 
country  is  smaller,  but  the  general  level  of  pros- 
perity was  higher  before  the  war  and  there  was  less 
extreme  poverty.  On  the  other  hand,  the  prole- 
tariat is  worse  off  in  France  than  in  England ; 
wages  are  lower  than  in  England  even'  nominally, 
and  their  real  value  is  much  lower,  since  the  cost 
of  living  in  France  is,  in  consequence  of  Protection, 
higher  than  in  England — probably  on  an  average 
about  40  per  cent,  higher.  London  is  the  cheapest 
capital  in  Europe,  except  Brussels,  and  Paris  is 
the  dearest.  I  am  speaking,  of  course,  of  normal 
times,  not  of  the  abnormal  conditions  created  by 
the  war.  During  the  war  the  difference  has  been 
more  in  favour  of  England  than  in  normal  times. 
Since  the  Armistice  prices  in  France  have  risen 
enormously,  and  the  cost  of  living  there  is  now  more 
than  double  what  it  is  in  England.1 

1  According  to  a  French  official  return  published  in  May,  1919, 
the  cost  of  living  increased  between  1910  and  1919  292  per  cent. 
in  France,  160  per  cent,  in  Great  Britain,  and  100  per  cent,  in 
the  United  States  of  America.  But  the  Berne  Statistical 
Society,  after  a  long  and  exhaustive  inquiry,  estimated  in  July, 
1919,  that  the  increase  during  the  war  of  the  prices  of  food, 
clothes,  and  rent  had  been  481  per  cent,  in  Italy,  368  per  cent, 
in  France,  257  per  cent,  in  Switzerland,  240  per  cent,  in  Great 
Britain,  and  220  per  cent,  in  the  United  States.  It  is,  of  course, 


42  MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

The  inferior  financial  position  of  the  proletariat 
in  France  is  due,  at  least  in  part,  to  the  greater 
subdivision  of  property.  The  very  fact  that  a 
majority  of  the  inhabitants  own  some  property 
makes  the  position  of  the  propertyless  minority 
worse  than  ever.  No  doubt  the  French  workmen 
are  not  so  well  organised  as  the  workmen  of  Eng- 
land or  the  United  States.  Their  trade  unions  have 
a  smaller  membership,  even  proportionately,  and 
are  poorer  and  less  powerful.  But  the  weakness  of 
the  labour  organisations  is  itself  partly  due  to  the 
fact  that  the  proletariat  is  a  minority  and  that  the 
distribution  of  property  among  so  many  owners 
makes  the  forces  of  conservatism  stronger  and  in- 
creases the  difficulties  with  which  the  proletariat 
has  to  contend.1  In  England,  the  town  workman 
and  the  agricultural  labourer  have  the  same  in- 
terests, for  both  are  wage-earners,  and  together 
they  are  the  great  majority  of  the  country.  In 
France  the  labourers  working  for  hire  are  only  a 
small  minority  of  the  agricultural  population. 
The  bulk  of  the  agricultural  population  is 
composed  of  small  farmers  owning  their  own 
land,  who  often  regard  their  interests  as  being 
opposed  to  those  of  the  proletariat  and  are 
sometimes  hostile  to  it.  The  war,  unfortu- 
nately, widened  the  breach  between  the  rural  and 

impossible  for  me  to  form  any  opinion  as  to  the  respective 
accuracy  of  these  different  figures.  Since  it  is  better  to  err  on 
the  side  of  moderation,  I  have  assumed  in  this  book  the  accuracy 
of  the  French  official  estimate  so  far  as  France  is  concerned. 

1  In  1906  it  was  officially  estimated  that  of  the  twenty  million 
people  (in  round  numbers)  engaged  in  active  work  in  France, 
8,300,000  were  employers  (or  men  or  women  working  on  their 
own  account)  and  11,700,000  were  employed  in  the  receipt  of 
salaries  or  wages.  But  the  employed  included  a  considerable 
number  of  bourgeois,  and  there  were  nearly  twenty  million 
people  not  engaged  in  active  work,  of  whom  much  less  than  half 
were  children.  In  Germany  in  1907  there  were  5,490,000 
employers  and  19,127,000  employed. 


PROBLEMS  OF  RECONSTRUCTION  43 

urban  populations.  It  was  necessary  to  withdraw 
a  considerable  proportion  of  town  workmen  from 
the  front  to  the  munition  factories,  with  the  result 
that  the  peasants  have  had,  on  the  whole,  heavier 
losses  in  the  war  than  any  other  class.  The  differ- 
ence is  not  really  so  great  as  the  peasants  them- 
selves imagine,  for,  in  fact,  many  of  the  employees 
in  the  munition  factories  came  from  rural  districts ; 
it  was  only  certain  classes  of  highly  skilled  work 
that  had  to  be  restricted  to  men  previously  em- 
ployed in  the  metal  trades.  The  losses  in  the  war 
of  the  Parisian  proletariat  have  been  higher  than 
the  average  of  the  whole  country,  a  fact  which  dis- 
proves the  legend  that  the  urban  population  has 
not  greatly  suffered.  Nevertheless,  there  is  con- 
siderable resentment  in  the  rural  districts  at  the 
heavy  losses  that  they  have  sustained,  and  that 
resentment  has  been  deliberately  nourished  by  the 
authorities  on  the  principle  of  "  divide  and 
conquer."  It  is,  however,  a  remarkable  fact  that 
for  some  years  before  the  war  Socialism  had  been 
making  progress  in  the  rural  districts,  which 
became  very  marked  at  the  general  election  of  1914. 
The  reason  of  this  phenomenon  is  no  doubt  that 
the  system  of  small  ownership  is  breaking  down  in 
France,  for  reasons  which  will  be  examined  later. 

One  important  reason — perhaps  the  most  impor- 
tant— of  the  greater  level  of  prosperity  in  France 
than  in  most  other  countries  is  the  limitation  of 
the  family.  Over  the  greater  part  of  the  country 
parents  in  all  classes  now  refuse  to  bring  into  the 
world  children  for  whom  they  have  no  means  of 
providing.  The  only  parts  of  the  country  in  which 
large  families  are  still  at  all  common  are  those  in 
which  the  Church  has  a  strong  hold  and  drunken- 
ness is  prevalent — I  do  not  say  that  there  is  neces- 
sarily any  connection  between  these  two  conditions. 


44 


MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 


Since  the  Church,  although  it  condemns  the  limita- 
tion of  families  as  a  sin,  utterly  fails  to  prevent  it 
over  the  greater  part  of  France,  even  among  those 
that  still  accept  its  ministrations,  it  is  probable 
that  drunkenness  is  the  chief  cause  of  the  large 
families  still  to  be  found  in  the  north  and  west  of 
the  country.  For  more  than  twenty  years  before 
the  war  the  population  of  France  had  remained 
almost  stationary,  the  increase  being  on  an  average 
about  60,000  a  year.1  Loud  lamentations  have 

1  Between  1872,  when  the  first  census  was  taken  after  the 
cession  to  Germany  of  Alsace-Lorraine,  and  1911,  date  of  the 
last  census,  the  population  of  France  increased  by  3,498,588, 
an  average  increase  of  89,707  a  year.  Between  1872  and  1891 
the  increase  was  2,240,271,  an  average  of  117,909  a  year;  and 
between  1891  and  1911  it  was  1,258,317,  an  annual  average  of 
62,915.  The  effect  of  the  limitation  of  the  family  was  most 
marked  between  1886  and  1896  ;  after  the  latter  year  the  birth- 
rate rose  again  slightly,  but  it  fell  again  in  1906-1911,  although 
not  to  the  level  of  1886-1896.  The  following  are  the  figures 
of  all  the  censuses  of  the  Third  Republic  : — 


1872 
1876 
1881 
1886 
1891 
1896 
1901 
1906 
1911 


Population. 
36,102,921 
36,905,788 
37,672,048 
38,218,903 
38,343,192 
38,517,975 
38,961,945 
39,252,245 
39,601,509 


Increase. 

802,867 
766,260 
546,855 
124,289 
175,027 
443,970 
290,322 
349,264 


Increase  in 
population  of 

French 
nationality. 


137,715 
249,334 
433,683 
318,685 
225,982 


The  census  returns  of  1886  were  the  first  that  gave  the  number 
of  foreigners  resident  in  France.  The  Law  of  June  26,  1889, 
obliged  certain  categories  of  foreigners  born  in  Franco  to  become 
French  citizens  ;  hence  a  considerable  decrease  in  the  foreign 
population  between  1889  and  1896.  It  increased  slightly  in 
1896-1901,  fell  again  slightly  in  1901-1906,  and  increased  in 
1906-1911  by  123,282.  The  total  foreign  population  in  1911 
was  1,132,696,  of  whom  204,679  were  in  the  department  of  the 
Seine,  180,004  in  that  of  the  Nord,  and  137,223  in  Bouches-du- 
Kh6ne.  The  foreign  population  in  1886  was  1,115,214,  so  that 


PROBLEMS  OF  RECONSTRUCTION  45 

been  raised  by  certain  people  in  France  over  this 
state  of  things,  but  they  have  been  as  useless  as 
they  are  unjustifiable.  Civilised  people  will  never 
again  consent  to  breed  like  rabbits  and  there  is, 
happily,  no  hope  that  the  nations  of  Europe  will 
consent  to  compete  with  one  another  in  population 
—a  competition  as  stupid  and  pernicious  as  com- 
petition in  armaments.  The  only  advantage  of  a 
large  population  is  that  it  provides  more  food 
for  cannon,  and  it  may  be  hoped  that  the 
peoples  of  Europe  have  no  intention  of  continuing 
to  produce  children  for  that  purpose.  Over- 
population may  suit  the  purpose  of  militarists 
and  capitalist  exploiters ;  it  is  certainly  not  to  the 
interest  of  the  masses  of  the  people  of  any 
country. 

Perhaps  the  limitation  of  families  has  been 
carried  to  excess  in  France ;  no  doubt  the  country 
could  support  a  rather  larger  population.  The 
area  of  France  before  the  war  was  nearly  as  large  as 
that  of  the  German  Empire — the  difference  was 
only  about  1,000  square  miles — and  the  popula- 
tion of  France  was  not  before  the  war  very  much 
more  than  half  that  of  Germany.  But  France 
could  support  a  population  equal  to  that  of  Ger- 
many only  by  becoming  an  industrial  country 
and  sacrificing  most  of  what  makes  life  worth 
living.  If  families  have  been  too  much  restricted 
in  France,  that  is  the  result  of  the  present 
economic  system.  In  a  capitalist  state  of  society 
a  man  without  property  or  with  only  a  very  little 
property  who  brings  into  the  world  a  large  number 
of  children  is  exposing  them  to  the  risk  of  a  life 

it  increased  by  only  17,484  in  25  years,  but  the  immigration  has, 
of  course,  been  larger,  as  the  voluntary  naturalisations  and  the 
operation  of  the  law  already  mentioned  have  to  be  taken  into 
account. 


46  MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

of  misery.  The  limitation  of  families  in  France  is 
not  due  as  a  rule  to  the  selfishness  of  parents,  but 
to  their  desire  only  to  have  children  to  whom  they 
can  give  a  decent  chance  in  life,  and  to  an  intelli- 
gent recognition  of  the  fact  that  in  the  case  of 
human  beings,  as  in  all  other  cases,  quality  is  more 
important  than  quantity.  The  well-meaning 
persons  that  waste  their  time  in  urging  people  to 
have  as  many  children  as  they  possibly  can — many 
of  whom  are  celibate  priests  and  most  of  whom 
have  not  practised  what  they  preach — would  be 
better  occupied  in  devoting  their  energies  to  reduc- 
ing the  high  rate  of  infant  mortality  and  giving  to 
the  children  that  are  born  a  better  chance  of  sur- 
viving. Above  all,  they  should  devote  themselves 
to  helping  the  mothers  of  illegitimate  children. 
The  ridiculous  notion  that  a  woman  has  no  right 
to  have  a  child  without  having  previously  obtained 
the  permission  of  a  priest  or  a  mayor  is  happily  on 
the  way  to  disappear  in  France,  especially  among 
the  proletariat,  although,  unfortunately,  it  is  still 
regarded  as  more  permissible  for  a  girl  to  have  a 
lover  than  to  have  a  child  by  him.  In  Paris,  how- 
ever, about  30  per  cent,  of  the  children  born  are 
illegitimate.  The  position  of  an  illegitimate  child 
is  far  better  in  France  than  hi  England,  where  it  is 
worse  than  in  almost  any  other  country  in  the 
world.  Not  only  can  the  parents  legitimise  the 
child  by  subsequent  marriage,  but  an  illegitimate 
child  legally  "  recognised  "  by  its  father  has, 
although  remaining  illegitimate,  the  right  to  take 
its  father's  name,  and  not  only  to  be  supported  by 
him,  but  to  inherit  a  certain  portion  of  his  property 
if  he  has  any.  What  makes  a  woman  hesitate  to 
have  a  child  when  she  is  not  married  is  less  the 
stigma  attaching  to  illegitimacy — for  that  is  dimin- 
ishing— than  the  difficulty  of  earning  enough  money 


PROBLEMS  OF  RECONSTRUCTION  47 

to  keep  the  child.1  The  solution  of  this  problem  is 
essential  if  it  be  desired  to  raise  the  French  birth- 
rate. It  is  estimated  that  there  are  about  300,000 
unmarried  couples  living  together  in  Paris,  and 
there  are  probably  quite  as  many  who  do  not  live 
together.  The  disinclination  to  contract  legal  mar- 
riage is  on  the  increase,  especially  among  women, 
and  it  is  futile  to  imagine  that  it  can  be  checked. 
The  matter  must  be  faced  without  prejudice,  and 
women  that  do  not  wish  to  marry  must  be  en- 
couraged to  have  children  if  they  desire  it.  The  only 
solution  of  the  problem  is  the  endowment  of 
motherhood,  whether  legitimate  or  illegitimate. 

1  There  is  now  a  bastardy  law  in  France  and  the  "  recherche 
de  paternite  "  can  be  made  either  by  the  mother,  or,  if  she  fail  to 
make  it,  by  the  child  on  attaining  the  age  of  twenty-one.  If 
the  paternity  is  proved,  the  father  can  be  compelled  to  con- 
tribute to  the  support  of  the  child  while  a  minor  and  has  certain 
rights  over  it.  The  law  has  not  been  much  used  up  to  the 
present  by  the  mothers  of  illegitimate  children,  many  of  whom 
prefer  to  retain  the  sole  control  of  the  child,  but  it  has  no  doubt 
helped  in  many  cases  to  obtain  pecuniary  aid  from  the  father 
without  legal  action.  The  French  law  does  not  compel  even 
the  mother  of  an  illegitimate  child  to  "  recognise  "  it,  and  it 
can  be  registered  as  the  offspring  of  "  parents  unknown."  The 
mother  can  also  hand  the  child  over  to  the  Assistance  Publique 
(Department  of  National  Poor  Relief),  which  will  then  entirely 
maintain  it  until  it  can  earn  its  own  living.  Children  taken 
over  by  the  Assistance  Publique  are  boarded  out  with  families, 
usually  in  the  country,  and  are  sometimes  treated  by  their 
foster-parents  as  their  own  children,  but  sometimes  not  at  all 
well  treated.  A  mother  that  abandons  her  child  to  the  Assist- 
ance Publique  finally  loses  all  rights  over  it,  and  is  not  allowed 
to  communicate  with  it  or  know  where  it  is  ;  the  Assistance 
Publique  will  give  no  help  to  a  mother  that  retains  her  child. 
This  system  is  thoroughly  bad,  as  it  encourages  mothers  to 
abandon  their  children,  whereas  they  should  be  encouraged  to 
keep  them.  Many  mothers  that  abandon  their  children  to  the 
Assistance  Publique  deeply  regret  it  afterwards,  and  during  the 
war  a  large  number  applied  to  the  Assistance  Publique  to  be  put 
into  communication  with  sons  who  had  then  reached  military 
age.  The  request  was  granted  when  the  whereabouts  of  the 
son  was  known,  as  I  believe  that  such  a  request  always  is  when 
the  abandoned  child  has  reached  his  or  her  majority. 


48  MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

The  endowment  should  be  limited  to  three  children, 
which  is  the  maximum  number  desirable  in  .any 
country.  But  the  population  question  as  a  whole 
will  never  be  put  on  a  satisfactory  bas^is  until  the 
economic  conditions  are  such  that  all  children  born 
will  have  a  chance  in  life.  Then,  and  only 
then,  will  people  be  willing  to  have  a  reason- 
able number  of  children — a  number  sufficient 
to  keep  the  population  at  the  same  level  and  pre- 
vent it  from  diminishing.  A  constant  increase  of 
population  would  be  no  more  desirable  in  socialist 
than  in  capitalist  conditions,  for  the  world  can  sup- 
port in  comfort  only  a  certain  number  of  people, 
and  if  that  number  be  exceeded  the  individual 
standard  of  comfort  must  be  reduced.  The  notion 
that  production  can  be  increased  to  an  unlimited 
extent  is  a  preposterous  fallacy.  Malthus  only 
formulated  in  a  theory  the  conclusions  of  ordinary 
good  sense.  The  discoveries  of  modern  science 
have  so  enormously  diminished  the  natural  checks 
to  the  growth  of  the  population  that  artificial 
restriction  has  become  necessary.  We  can  never 
again  return  to  what  M.  Sixte-Quenin  has  called 
"  le  lapinisme  integral." 

Had  the  conditions  remained  normal  there  would 
not,  then,  have  been  much  reason  for  anxiety  in 
regard  to  the  French  population.  But  for  five 
years  the  conditions  have  not  been  normal.  The 
war  has  made  the  population  question  acute  and 
has  brought  France  face  to  face  with  a  serious  situa- 
tion. The  birth-rate,  which  before  the  war  was 
18  per  1,000,  has  sunk  to  10  per  1,000,  and  the 
death-rate  in  the  non-combatant  population  has 
slightly  increased.1 

1  It  appears  from  the  Parisian  municipal  statistics  published 
in  July  1919,  that  the  number  of  births  in  the  department  of 
the  Seine  fell  from  73,599  in  1911  to  47,480  in  1918.  On  the 


PROBLEMS  OF  RECONSTRUCTION  49 

The  quinquennial  census  should  have  been  taken 
in  1916,  but  it  was  postponed  on  account  of  the 
war  and  has  not  yet  taken  place.  Until  1919  no 
official  statistics  of  births  and  deaths  had  been  pub- 
lished since  the  beginning  of  the  war,  but  in  Feb- 
ruary, 1919,  M.  March,  the  Director  of  Statistics, 
issued  a  report  giving  the  figures  for  77  French 
departments  for  the  four  years  1914-1917.  The 
departments  concerned  are  those  that  were  never 
invaded ;  the  statistics  for  the  11  invaded  depart- 
ments are  not  yet  available.  The  statistics  are  as 
follows,  the  figures  of  1913  being  given  for  the  pur- 
pose of  comparison : — 


1913 
1914 
1915 

1916  , 

1917  , 

The  deaths  in  these  tables  are  those  of  the  non- 
combatant  population  only  and  do  not  include 
even  deaths  of  mobilised  men  in  barracks  or  hospi- 
tals. It  will  be  seen  that,  whereas  in  1913  there 
was  the  small  excess  of  17,366  births  over  deaths, 
during  the  war  up  to  the  end  of  1917  the  civil  popu- 
lation in  the  77  departments  decreased  by  883,169. 
The  number  of  deaths  in  the  army  during  the  war, 
including  those  in  barracks  and  hospitals,  was  at 
least  1,500,000.  M.  Poincare  in  January  1919  put 
it  at  1,800,000,  but  he  may  have  been  including  the 
black  troops.  To  this  have  to  be  added  the  de- 
other  hand  the  infant  mortality  (deaths  of  children  from  one  day 
to  one  year  old),  which  was  10-66  per  cent,  before  the  war, 
rose  to  40  per  cent,  in  1918.  In  1918  3,149  children  were  aban- 
doned to  the  Assistance  Publique  in  the  department  of  the  Seine . 


Births. 

Birth-rate 
per  1,000. 

Deaths. 

Death-rate 
per  1,000. 

604,801 

183 

587,445 

178 

594,222 

180 

647,549 

196 

387,806 

117 

655,146 

19'8 

315,087 

9'5 

607,742 

184 

343,310 

10'4 

613,148 

18'6 

50  MY  SECOND  COUNTRY 

crease  since  1917  in  the  civil  population  of  the  77 
departments  concerned,  and  that  in  the  11  invaded 
departments  during  the  five  years  1914-1918. 
When  all  these  figures  have  been  ascertained,  it 
will  be  found  that  the  population  of  France  has 
decreased  since  1913  by  about  three  and  a  half 
millions. 

M.  March  insisted  in  his  report  on  "  the  grave 
effects  of  the  war  on  the  state  of  the  population  " 
and  on  the  consequences  for  the  economic  future 
of  the  country.  He  pointed  out  that  the  decrease 
has  been  mainly  in  the  male  population  between 
the  ages  of  sixteen  and  sixty-five,  on  whom  pro- 
duction chiefly  depends.  Fifteen  years  hence,  he 
said,  the  situation  in  this  regard  will  be  still  more 
serious.  Whereas  the  male  population  between 
the  ages  mentioned  was  at  the  last  census  (1911) 
12,300,000  in  round  figures,  he  estimated  that 
it  cannot  exceed  10,300,000  in  1935,  in  conse- 
quence of  the  losses  in  the  war  and  the 
diminution  in  the  number  of  children  born. 
Moreover,  among  the  men  between  sixteen  and 
sixty-five  remaining  about  350,000  have  been 
completely  disabled  by  the  war,  about  450,000 
are  permanently  injured  without  being  completely 
disabled,  and  an  unknown  number  have  sustained 
in  the  war  some  physical  or  mental  injury  which, 
although  it  did  not  lead  to  their  discharge  from  the 
army,  is  likely  to  diminish  their  producing  power. 

The  annexation  of  Alsace-Lorraine  will,  M.  March 
said,  add  about  400,000  men  between  sixteen  and 
sixty-five  to  the  population  of  France,  but  they 
will  not  be  sufficient  to  secure  the  production  of  the 
recovered  provinces.  It  may  be  hoped  in  these  cir- 
cumstances that  the  French  Government  will  see 
the  wisdom  of  allowing  the  German  immigrts  in 
Alsace-Lorraine  to  opt  for  France  if  they  wish ;  but 


PROBLEMS  OF  RECONSTRUCTION  51 

the  policy  of  expelling  them  seems  already  to  have 
been  carried  very  far.  It  would  have  been  wiser 
not  to  have  been  so  hasty.  At  the  last  census,  in 
1911,  the  population  of  France,  without  Alsace- 
Lorraine,  was  39,601,509;  as  the  result  of  the  war 
France  finds  herself  with  a  larger  territory  and  a 
population  (including  Alsace-Lorraine)  probably 
not  much  exceeding  37,500,000. 

There  is,  therefore,  now  a  danger  that  the  popu- 
lation of  France  will  continue  to  decrease ;  it  must 
do  so  without  a  considerable  rise  in  the  birth-rate, 
and  the  end  of  the  process  would  be  the  extinction 
of  the  French  race.  The  economic  conditions  are 
not  such  as  to  make  a  rise  in  the  birth-rate  prob- 
able, apart  from  the  facts  that  the  number  of  poten- 
tial fathers  is  greatly  diminished  and  that  a  large 
proportion  of  the  potential  fathers  are  old  or  weak. 
Physical  degeneration  is  an  almost  certain  con- 
sequence of  the  war.  It  has  been  shown  by  Miche- 
let  and  others  that  the  wars  of  Napoleon  had  a 
serious  physical  effect  on  the  French  people,  includ- 
ing a  considerable  diminution  of  their  average 
height,  and  the  wars  of  Napoleon  were  nothing  in 
comparison  with  this  war,  the  effects  of  which  must 
be  still  more  serious.  Since  some  two  million 
women  of  the  rising  generation  cannot  find  hus- 
bands among  Frenchmen,  France  can  be  saved 
only  by  a  large  immigration  of  adult  men  or  by  a 
large  number  of  illegitimate  children,  or  by  both. 
It  becomes  essential  to  the  existence  of  the  French 
people  to  encourage  women  to  have  children  with- 
out marrying.  But  even  the  endowment  of 
motherhood  is  not  likely  to  raise  the  birth-rate  im- 
mediately, for  the  economic  conditions  are  likely 
to  become  worse  in  the  near  future  and  people  will 
be  more  unwilling  than  ever  to  bring  children  into 
the  world.  Yet,  even  if  the  rate  of  increase  in  the 

E  2 


52  MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

population  of  the  period  1906-1911  were  at  once 
returned  to,  it  would  take  at  least  half  a  century 
to  bring  the  French  population  back  to  the  figure 
of  1911. 

The  economic  and  financial  situation  of  France  is 
a  terrible  one.  Ten  of  her  departments  were  in- 
vaded, and  now  that  they  have  been  recovered  they 
are  in  a  state  of  devastation.  Whole  towns  and 
villages  have  been  annihilated,  and  the  most  impor- 
tant industrial  district  in  France  has  been  laid 
waste  by  the  three  armies.  For  one  of  the  most 
poignant  circumstances  of  the  war  was  that  the 
Allied  armies  were  compelled  to  bombard  French 
towns;  for  example,  they  entirely  destroyed  Lens, 
which  was  before  the  war  a  flourishing  industrial 
town  with  35,000  inhabitants,  and  did  serious 
damage  to  St.  Quentin,  where  only  the  four  walls 
are  left  of  the  great  collegiate  church.  In  an  article 
published  in  the  Manchester  Guardian  on  May  15, 
1919,  the  distinguished  French  economist,  M. 
Francis  Delaisi,  said  that  France  lost  by  the  inva- 
sion 90  per  cent,  of  her  iron  ore,  83  per  cent,  of  her 
foundries,  50  per  cent,  of  her  coal;  her  woollen 
industry  lost  80  per  cent,  of  its  combing  machines, 
84  per  cent,  of  its  spindles,  81  per  cent,  of  its  looms ; 
her  cotton  industry  lost  59  per  cent,  of  its  spindles, 
and  70  per  cent,  of  the  French  sugar  factories  were 
in  the  hands  of  the  enemy.  Altogether,  M.  Delaisi 
said,  France  was  deprived  by  the  invasion  of  27,763 
factories,  representing,  according  to  the  fiscal  valua- 
tion in  1912,  30  per  cent,  of  the  value  of  all  her  fac- 
tories. It  is  true  that  in  the  course  of  the  war  new 
factories  were  set  up  in  the  uninvaded  districts 
and  the  war  industries  were  developed  to  such  an 
extent  that  at  the  end  of  1917  the  number  of  work- 
men employed  was  2  per  cent,  larger  than  in  1913, 
in  spite  of  the  millions  of  men  at  the  front.  The 


PROBLEMS  OF  RECONSTRUCTION  53 

French  ports,  too,  were  greatly  enlarged,  improved 
machinery  and  methods  were  introduced  and  the 
output  was  increased.  But  these  factories  cannot 
permanently  remain  where  they  are,  even  when 
they  have  been  adapted  to  peace  production.  The 
North  is  the  part  of  France  naturally  suited  to  in- 
dustry, and  the  industry  of  the  North  must  be 
restored;  it  will  take  years  to  restore  it,  especially 
if  the  Protectionist  policy  continues  and  the  French 
market  is  closed  to  foreign  manufactured  goods. 
According  to  an  official  estimate,  the  reconstruction 
of  the  invaded  territory  will  cost  about 
£2,400,000,000.'  This  vast  sum  has  to  be  found 
somehow  by  the  State,  except  such  part  of  it  as  can 
be  obtained  from  Germany.  Moreover,  French  com- 
merce has  been  paralysed  by  the  war ;  most  of  the 
foreign  trade  has  gone  to  America,  Japan  and  other 
countries  and  a  large  proportion  of  it  will  never 
return,  or  at  any  rate  will  not  be  recovered  for  many 
years. 

French  national  finance  is  in  such  a  state  that 
the  financial  problem  seems  insoluble.  The 
National  Debt,  which  in  1914  was  £1,280,000,000, 
was  at  the  beginning  of  1919  £6,720,000,000.  The 
interest  on  it  at  5  per  cent,  (and  the  State  is  paying 
more  than  5  per  cent,  on  all  war  loans)  is,  there- 

1  M.  Delaisi  pointed  out  that  the  invaded  regions  suffered  not 
only  from  artillery  fire,  but  also  from  the  "  organised  pillage  " 
of  the  German  army.  He  said  :  "A  large  proportion  of  our 
coal  mines  are  flooded  ;  a  third  of  our  blast-furnaces  are  de- 
stroyed and  the  remaining  two -thirds  have  been  stripped  of  their 
machinery  ;  all  the  plant  of  the  steel  factories  and  rolling  mills 
has  been  carried  off  to  Germany ;  in  our  spinning  mills  we  have 
found  only  40  per  cent,  of  the  spindles,  30  per  cent,  of  the  carded 
wool  spindles  and  30  per  cent,  of  the  cotton  spindles.  In  our 
weaving  factories  only  40  per  cent,  of  our  wool  looms,  20  per 
cent,  of  our  cotton  looms,  and  10  per  cent,  of  our  cloth  looms  are 
left  to  us.  Everywhere  the  stocks  have  been  taken,  the  running 
plant  carried  off,  the  mill  dams  broken."  (Manchester  Guardian 
May  15,  1919.) 


54  MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

fore,  £336,000,000  a  year ;  before  the  war  the  total 
annual  expenditure  of  France  was  only  about 
£200,000,000.  The  national  expenditure  for  the 
second  quarter  of  1919  was  estimated  at 
£520,000,000,  and  the  revenue  from  taxes  at  only 
£112,000,000.  Throughout  the  war  the  revenue 
from  taxes  has  met  only  a  small  part  of  the  ex- 
penditure and  the  interest  on  the  National  Debt 
has  all  been  paid  out  of  capital.  Recourse  has  been 
had  to  the  desperate  expedients  of  loans  at  short 
term  and  a  reckless  issue  of  paper  money.  War 
Bonds  ("  Bons  de  la  Defense  Nationale ")  were 
issued,  repayable  three,  six,  or  twelve  months  after 
the  date  of  issue;  in  January  1919  the  value  of 
these  bonds  issued  and  unredeemed  was 
£920,000,000.  The  total  value  of  the  bank  notes  in 
circulation  in  May  1919  was  £1,600,000,000,  of 
which  the  sum  of  £1,080,000,000  was  a  loan  from 
the  Bank  of  France  to  the  State  to  meet  current 
expenditure.  At  the  end  of  1911  tne  value  of  the 
bank  notes  in  circulation  was  £272,000,000,  and 
even  in  August  1917  it  was  only  £480,000,000; 
so  that  in  the  course  of  the  twenty-two  months 
between  the  latter  date  and  May  1919  bank  notes 
were  issued  to  the  value  of  £1,120,000,000.  Against 
this  huge  issue  of  forced  paper  currency  the  Bank 
of  France  had  in  May  1919  a  gold  and  silver 
reserve  of  only  £234,000,000.  If  at  any  time  the 
War  Bonds  as  they  became  due  were  not  renewed 
by  their  holders,  or  fresh  ones  were  not  taken  out 
to  replace  them,  the  State  would  be  unable  to  pay 
them  and  a  catastrophe  would  be  inevitable.  The 
result  of  the  enormous  issue  of  paper  money  has 
been,  of  course,  a  depreciation  of  the  currency. 
The  rate  of  exchange  was  artificially  kept  up  during 
the  war,  but  when  British  and  American  financiers 
refused  to  go  on  bolstering  it  up  it  fell  against 


PROBLEMS  OF  RECONSTRUCTION  55 

France  and  is  likely  to  go  on  falling,  for  the  real 
value  of  the  franc  is  probably  not  more  than 
sixpence. 

In  fact,  the  French  State  is  insolvent,  and  it  is 
becoming  more  and  more  evident  that  there  is  no 
solution  of  the  problem  except  that  of  national 
bankruptcy.  Unless  France  repudiates  her 
National  Debt  she  will  be  reduced  to  hopeless 
poverty.  TEe  national  liabilities  could  be  metr  if 
at  all,  only  by  crushing  taxation,  which  would 
mean  misery  for  several  generations  of  the  French 
people.  Throughout  the  war  the  bourgeoisie  has 
refused  to  pay  a  high  income  tax  in  the  insane  delu- 
sion that  the  whole  cost  of  the  war  could  be 
obtained  from  Germany ;  even  now,  when  it  is  ob- 
vious that  that  is  impossible,  the  bourgeoisie  refuses 
to  make  any  serious  sacrifices  and  will  not 
hear  of  a  levy  on  capital  or  even  of  an 
adequate  income  tax.1  In  June  1919  new 
indirect  taxes  were  imposed,  although  the  cost 
of  living  in  France  was  then  four  times  what 
it  had  been  in  1910.  The  rulers  of  France 
could  suggest  no  solution  of  the  financial  pro- 
blem, and  their  attitude  in  the  face  of  it  was 
one  of  hopeless  impotence.  To  ask  the  people 

1  The  highest  rate  of  income-tax,  which  until  1919  was  only 
ten  per  cent.,  is  now  twenty  per  cent.,  and  is  not  payable  on 
the  whole  of  even  the  largest  incomes.  The  tax  is  not  properly 
collected  and  there  are  heavy  arrears.  Capitalists  engaged  in 
trade  or  industry  are  allowed,  instead  of  making  a  declaration 
of  their  real  income,  to  pay  on  a  valuation  which  is,  of  course, 
always  much  less  than  their  actual  profits.  The  same  practice 
is  followed  in  regard  to  the  excess  profit  tax,  which  has  in  France 
produced  a  ridiculously  small  sum,  merely  because  it  is  not 
properly  enforced  and  the  great  majority  of  those  liable  to  it 
escape  the  greater  part  of  it.  In  no  belligerent  country  have 
the  rich  contributed  so  little  during  the  war  as  in  France,  or 
the  poor  so  much  in  the  way  of  indirect  taxation.  Every 
successive  Government  has  favoured  the  rich  at  the  expense  of 
the  poor  in  regard  to  taxation. 


56  MY   SECOND  COUNTRY 

of  a  country  in  such  a  pass  as  this  to  produce  un- 
limited children  would  be  madness. 

Immigration  is  the  only  method  by  which  pro- 
duction can  be  secured  and  reconstruction  made 
possible,  for  even  a  large  increase  in  the  birth-rate, 
if  it  were  possible,  could  have  no  effect  on  produc- 
tion for  several  years  to  come.  Unfortunately,  the 
Nationalist  sentiment  produced  by  the  war  has 
led  successive  French  Governments  to  introduce 
measures  for  the  purpose  of  discouraging  foreigners 
from  settling  in  France  and  making  naturalisation 
as  difficult  as  possible.  Ten  years'  residence  is 
already  necessary  before  a  foreigner  can  be 
naturalised  (except  in  special  circumstances),  and 
M.  Viviani  actually  proposed  when  he  was  Prime 
Minister  that  even  after  naturalisation  there  should 
be  another  interval  of  ten  years  before  political 
rights  were  acquired.  In  such  conditions  few  would 
take  the  trouble  to  be  naturalised.  Such  provisions 
would  be  senseless  enough  at  any  tune,  for  it  is  to 
the  interest  of  a  country  that  persons  living  on  its 
territory  should  be  its  citizens.  Moreover,  France  is 
the  country  that  has  least  to  fear  from  immigration, 
since  the  French  have  an  extraordinary  power  of 
assimilating  foreigners;  the  children  of  foreigners 
born  in  France  are  usually  as  thoroughly  French  as 
those  born  of  French  parents.  At  this  moment, 
when  the  very  existence  of  France  depends  on 
immigration,  such  measures  as  those  that  have 
been  proposed  and  in  some  cases  passed  are  suicidal. 
France  needs  immediately  at  least  a  million  and  a 
half  more  adult  men.  Within  the  next  fifteen  years, 
as  M.  March  has  shown,  she  will  need  another  half 
million.  They  can  be  found  only  in  other  countries, 
if  they  can  be  found  at  all.  One  of  the  first  and 
essential  conditions  of  reconstruction  is  to  do 
everything  possible  to  encourage  immigration. 


PROBLEMS  OF  RECONSTRUCTION  57 

There  is  no  country  that  would  not  be  the  better 
for  the  infusion  of  new  blood.  All  the  great  nations 
of  the  world  are  the  result  of  a  mixture  of  races — 
the  French  perhaps  more  than  any,  except  the 
United  States — and  there  is  no  reason  why  the 
process  should  not  be  continued.  The  immigrants 
would  soon  assimilate  all  that  is  best  in  French 
civilisation  and  culture  and  would  bring  to  France 
qualities  of  their  own  which  would  enable  the 
French  nation  not  merely  to  recover  itself,  but 
also  to  become  greater  than  ever. 

Unfortunately,  the  problem  of  reconstruction  does 
not  seem  to  be  receiving  in  France  the  attention 
that   it   deserves.     At   a   moment  when  the   very 
existence  of  the  nation  is  at  stake  the  Government, 
the  politicians,  and  a  large  section  of  the  Press  and 
the  public  seem  to  be  much  more  concerned  about 
strategic  frontiers  and  territorial  acquisitions  than 
the  really  important  matter,  namely,  what  form 
reconstruction   is  to   take   and   what   changes  are 
necessary  in  French  institutions   and  methods  to 
make   it   effective.     That   is   the   matter   which   I 
propose  to  treat  chiefly  in  this  book  in  a  spirit  of 
profound  attachment  to  France  and  sincere  affec- 
tion for  the  French  people  among  whom  I  have 
nade  my  home.     There  is  a  preliminary  question 
vhich  has  to  be  answered  :  Should  France,  as  many 
frenchmen  think,    aim   at   becoming   a   great  in- 
distrial   nation  ?       As   I   have   already  said,   my 
anwer  would  be  in  the  negative.    The  question,  in 
fac,  involves  that  of  the  art  of  living.  The  majority 
of  fcople  in  our  modern  industrial  conditions  do  not 
liveit  all,  they  simply  exist.     Is  it  possible  to  live 
in   \e   full    sense  of   the   term    in   such   horrible 
excncences   of   capitalist   society   as   Glasgow  or 
Sheftld,    which   are   no   worse  than   other  great 
towns  ?     A  man  who  voluntarily  lives  in 


58  MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

such  places  in  order  to  amass  money  is  a  fool  to  be 
despised;  a  man  who  lives  in  them  because  he 
must  in  order  to  keep  body  and  soul  together  is 
a  victim  to  be  pitied.  If  Socialism  does  not  sweep 
such  places  off  the  face  of  the  earth  it  will  not 
justify  itself.  Industry  must  continue,  the  use  of 
machinery  must  be  still  further  developed,  but  the 
industrial  worker  must  be  emancipated  from  an 
environment  of  sordid  ugliness  and  be  given  time 
and  opportunity  to  live.  It  would  not  hurt  a  man 
to  work,  say,  four  or  even  six  hours  a  day  at  a 
machine  if  the  rest  of  his  time  were  his  own  to  work 
or  play  as  he  pleased,  and  if  the  treasures  of  art  and 
nature  were  open  to  him. 

But  so  long  as  the  capitalist  system  continues  a 
country  like  France,  in  a  position  to  enjoy  great 
prosperity  without  a  great  development  of  industry, 
is  indeed  fortunate.     Which  is  the  happier :  the  life 
of  a  wine-grower  in  Burgundy  or  Champagne  or  the 
Gironde,   or   Touraine,    or   that   of   an   industrial, 
whether  employer  or  workman,  in  Lille  or  Tour- 
coing  or  Roubaix  ?     No  doubt  the  most  prosperous 
wine-grower  makes  less  money  than  the  industrial 
magnate,  but  he  is  far  richer  in  all  that  makes  life 
worth   living.       He  has  the   sun,   the  trees,   the 
flowers,   the  vineyards   on  the   southern  hillsides, 
and  above  all  leisure,  except  during  the  short  buy 
periods  of  the  year.     There  would  be  no  progress 
in  substituting  furnaces  and  factory  chimneys  or 
the   vineyards    and    cornfields,    the   orchards   rfid 
gardens  of  Touraine,  in  befouling  the  Loire  ^th 
chemicals,  or   in   converting  Tours   or  Bordeaux, 
Toulouse  or  Dijon,  into  imitations  of  Manc^ster 
or  Birmingham.       It  is  true  that  the  systefl  on 
which  French  agriculture  is  at  present  convicted 
involves  in  many  parts  of  France  excessi*  and 
quite   unnecessary   labour   and   that   the   ?asant 


PROBLEMS  OF  RECONSTRUCTION  59 

farmer  as  distinct  from  the  wine-grower  is  often 
brutalised  by  stupid  and  monotonous  toil.  But  the 
remedy  is  to  change  the  system.  With  modern 
methods  and  a  full  use  of  agricultural  machinery 
France  might  produce  more  than  she  does  at  present 
with  half  the  labour.  The  one  great  advantage  that 
France  has  in  her  present  economic  and  financial 
crisis  is  the  fact  that  her  most  important  industry — 
agriculture — can  be  at  once  resumed  and  does  not 
need  years  to  recover  itself.  The  land  is  still  there, 
and  although  much  of  it  has  gone  out  of  cultivation 
during  the  war  or  been  only  imperfectly  cultivated, 
a  couple  of  years  would  set  everything  right.  Here 
is  the  point  on  which  attention  should  first  have 
been  concentrated  rather  than  on  schemes  for 
appropriating  the  coal  of  the  Saar  Valley. 

This  does  not  mean  that  France  is  to  have  no 
industry  at  all ;  but  the  policy  of  artificially  foster- 
ing industries  by  Protection  should  be  discontinued. 
If  and  when  the  nations  of  the  world  have  the 
sense  to  adopt  universal  Free  Trade,  every  country 
will  have  those  industries,  and  only  those,  which 
are  natural  to  it.  Meanwhile,  the  French  people 
would  do  well  to  consider  whether  they  would  not 
be  wise  to  adopt  Free  Trade  without  waiting  for 
every  other  country  to  do  so.  The  experience  of 
France  has  proved  the  folly  of  the  notion  that 
Protection  can  be  limited  to  raw  material  or  limited 
in  any  way  whatever.  There  is  no  practical 
alternative  between  Free  Trade  and  all-round 
Protection.  The  Protectionist  reaction  began  in 
France  more  than  thirty  years  ago  with  the  pretext 
of  limiting  protective  duties  to  certain  commodities. 
But  higrh  Protection  raised  prices  and  the  un- 
protected trades,  which  had  to  pay  more  for 
everything  thev  bought,  soon  insisted  on  being 
protected  in  their  turn.  No  definition  of  raw 


60  MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

material  is  possible.  Cloth  and  silk,  for  instance, 
are  manufactured  articles,  but  they  are  the  raw 
material  of  the  tailor  and  the  dressmaker.  At  the 
present  moment,  the  cloth  and  silk  manufacturers 
demand  that  the  importation  of  cloth  and  silk 
should  be  restricted,  and  the  clothing  trades,  which 
are  among  the  most  important  industries  in  France, 
demand  their  unrestricted  importation.  The 
former  declare  that  they  will  be  ruined  if  imports 
are  not  limited ;  the  latter  say,  with  truth,  that  they 
are  being  ruined  by  the  limitation  of  imports.  The 
solution  of  the  problem,  as  of  most  others,  is 
liberty.  In  the  long  run  liberty,  whether  it  be  a 
question  of  opinion  or  of  commodities,  does  less 
harm  than  restriction.  It  has  its  drawbacks,  but 
this  is  an  imperfect  world. 

The  results  of  Protection  have  been  so  disastrous 
in  France  that  a  reaction  against  it  is  beginning. 
The  lack  of  instruction  on  economic  questions  has 
hitherto  prevented  an  organised  movement  in 
favour  of  Free  Trade.  Even  the  Socialist  Party  has 
not  yet  realised  the  importance  of  the  matter. 
Two  or  three  years  ago  I  had  a  long  conversation 
with  a  Socialist  Deputy  on  this  very  question. 
After  listening  with  interest  to  my  arguments  in 
favour  of  Free  Trade,  he  said  :  "  That  is  a  very 
interesting  subject ;  I  never  thought  about  it 
before."  His  case  is,  unfortunately,  typical.  Yet 
universal  Free  Trade,  which  is  the  suppression  of 
economic  frontiers,  is  essential  to  Internationalism 
—it  is,  in  fact,  economic  Internationalism — and 
Internationalism  is  essential  to  Socialism.  But 
some  of  the  results  of  Protection  are  so  obvious  that 
they  cannot  be  ignored.  The  urban  populations 
see  that  the  price  of  food  is  artificially  kept  up  and 
is  much  higher  than  in  England.  Many  industries 
find  themselves  seriously  hampered  by  the  high 


PROBLEMS  OP  RECONSTRUCTION  61 

price  of  their  raw  materials.  Protection  has  ruined 
the  French  mercantile  marine.  Commodities  such 
as  coal,  of  which  France  does  not  produce  nearly 
enough  for  her  own  use,  are  protected  nevertheless. 
The  result  is  a  Coal  Trust  which  even  in  peace  tune 
kept  the  price  of  coal  in  Paris  at  about  three  times 
what  it  was  in  London;  the  duty  and  the  cost  of 
transport  accounted  perhaps  for  about  twenty  per 
cent,  of  the  difference.  For  one  of  the  charms  of 
Protection  is  that  it  almost  invariably  raises  prices 
by  a  great  deal  more  than  the  actual  amount  of 
the  duty.  Some  of  the  vagaries  of  Protection  are 
grotesque ;  for  instance,  there  is  an  import  duty  on 
bananas,  although  they  are  not  grown  in  France,  in 
order  to  keep  up  their  price  in  the  supposed  interest 
of  French  growers  of  apples  and  pears.  French 
butter  is  cheaper  in  England  than  in  France,  and 
I  have  gone  from  Paris  to  London  to  find  French 
grapes  being  sold  there  at  a  lower  price  than  in 
Paris.  On  the  other  hand,  certain  industries  have 
been  artifically  promoted  by  Protection,  with 
results  not  always  purely  economic.  The  metal- 
lurgical industries,  in  particular,  have  been 
developed  far  beyond  the  needs  of  the  country  and 
have  become  immensely  powerful.  Their  in- 
fluence in  politics  and  on  the  Press  is  most 
pernicious;  while  they  have  worked  hand  in  hand 
with  the  same  industries  in  other  countries,  in- 
cluding Germany,  as  frequent  revelations  have 
shown,  they  have  spent  enormous  sums  in  pro- 
moting Chauvinist  feeling  in  order  to  obtain  orders 
for  armaments.  They  were  the  chief  promoters  of 
the  agitation  for  the  annexation  of  the  Saar  Valley, 
and  there  is  good  reason  for  believing  that  they 
prevented  the  bombardment  of  the  mines  of  Briey 
when  the  latter  were  held  by  the  Germans. 

In  the  French  colonies^  Protectionism  has  done 


62  MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

even  more  harm  than  in  France  itself.  The  colonies 
are  compelled  to  pay  import  duty  on  their  products 
imported  into  France,  whereas  French  products 
enter  the  colonies  duty  free,  heavy  duties  being 
imposed  on  imports  from  other  countries.  The 
natural  result  has  been  the  ruin  of  the  colonies  thus 
exploited  without  any  regard  for  their  own  interests 
and  development.  An  international  agreement 
prevents  the  application  of  this  system  to  the 
French  Congo,  which  is  consequently  the  only  really 
prosperous  colony.  The  disastrous  economic  results 
of  the  Protectionist  policy  in  the  colonies  have  been 
frequently  pointed  out  in  the  Temps,  and  the  late 
M.  Pascal  Ceccaldi  exposed  them  in  detail  in  his 
able  report  on  the  Colonial  Budget  presented  to  the 
Chamber  of  Deputies  in  1915.  The  policy  has  had 
equally  disastrous  political  results,  for  it  has  in- 
evitably excited  jealousy  of  the  French  Colonial 
Empire  on  the  part  of  other  countries,  whose 
economic  interests  were  threatened  by  French 
Colonial  expansion.  Jealousy  of  the  British  Empire 
has  greatly  diminished  since  the  adoption  of  Free 
Trade,  for  if  a  colony  has  Free  Trade,  or  if  the 
imports  into  it  of  all  countries  have  equal  treat- 
ment, it  is  not  a  matter  of  great  importance  to  what 
country  it  belongs.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
acquisition  of  a  colony  by  a  particular  nation  means 
that  it  will  be  closed  to  the  trade  of  all  others,  it  is 
impossible  that  the  other  nations  can  view  it  with 
equanimity.  Nobody  can  read  the  French  Yellow 
Books  on  Morocco  without  being  convinced  that 
what  influenced  the  whole  German  attitude  and 
policy  in  that  matter  was  fear  that,  if  Morocco  came 
under  French  influence,  it  would  ultimately  be 
closed  to  the  trade  of  other  countries.  The  Anglo- 
French  Agreement  of  1904  provided  for  the  open 
door  in  Morocco  for  thirty  years,  but  it  left  France 


PROBLEMS  OF  RECONSTRUCTION  63 

free  to  close  it  at  the  end  of  that  time.  Moreover, 
confidence  in  that  agreement  was  necessarily 
destroyed  by  the  existence  of  the  secret  clauses 
which  contradicted  some  of  the  most  important 
provisions  of  the  public  treaty.  I  have  always 
been  convinced  that  the  discovery  of  the  existence 
of  the  secret  clauses — probably  from  a  Russian 
source,  for  they  had  been  communicated  to  Russia 
as  the  Ally  of  France — was  the  cause  of  the  German 
Emperor's  sensational  visit  to  Tangiers  in  1905. 
It  would  not  have  been  unreasonable  to  conclude 
that,  since  England  and  France  had  deceived  the 
world  on  the  question  of  the  integrity  and  indepen- 
dence of  Morocco,  no  reliance  could  be  placed  on 
their  guarantee  of  the  open  door  for  thirty  years. 
The  Moroccan  dispute  brought  France  and  Germany 
to  the  verge  of  war  in  1905  and  again  in  1911 ; 
without  any  doubt  it  was  one  of  the  ultimate  causes 
of  the  recent  war,  which  was,  on  the  part  of 
Germany,  partly  a  "  preventive  war,"  partly  a 
war  for  colonial  expansion.  Protectionism  will 
always  lead  to  war  and  universal  Free  Trade 
is  one  of  the  essential  conditions  of  permanent 
peace.  One  of  the  most  necessary  factors  in  French 
reconstruction  is,  then,  a  thorough  reform  of  the 
whole  colonial  system,  which  is  far  more  important 
to  France  than  any  extension  of  territory.  Indeed, 
France  of  all  countries  least  needs  more  territory; 
her  colonial  empire  is  already  larger  than  she  can 
conveniently  manage  and  its  resources  are  far 
from  being  fully  developed;  she  has  no  surplus 
population  for  colonising  purposes  and  Frenchmen 
will  not  go  to  the  colonies  unless  they  happen  to  be 
officials.  Even  in  Tunis  there  are  many  more 
Italians  than  Frenchmen,  although  the  Mediter- 
ranean Basin  is  particularly  suitable  for  French 
colonisation.  Indeed  France  would  have  done  well 


64  MY   SECOND  COUNTRY 

to  have  concentrated  her  colonising  efforts  on  the 
Mediterranean,  where  experience  has  shown  that 
Southern  Frenchmen  and  Italians  are  the  most 
successful  colonists,  and  to  have  left  Asia  and  other 
parts  of  Africa  alone. 

In  any  case,  any  further  extension  of  French 
territory  would  be  a  grave  blunder  which  could 
only  do  injury  to  France.  The  Third  Republic 
has  already  added  to  the  French  dominions  territory 
with  an  aggregate  area  larger  than  that  of  the 
United  States  of  America;  it  is  time  to  stop. 
History  gives  many  examples  of  nations  that  have 
come  to  grief  by  over-expansion — Poland  was  one 
of  them — and  France  is  at  a  turning  point  in  her 
history  where  she  cannot  afford  to  take  any  risks. 
She  needs  to  concentrate  all  her  energies  on  the 
restoration  and  development  of  her  existing 
resources,  which  are  immense,  and  which  have  not 
yet  been  used  to  their  full  extent.  To  that  end  she 
must  reorganise,  not  only  her  colonial  system,  but 
her  agriculture  and  her  industries,  and  the  first  and 
most  necessary  step  is  to  set  them  free  from  the 
trammels  of  State  interference  and  to  finish  with 
the  policy  of  artificially  limiting  production  and 
bolstering  up  prices.  The  absurdity  of  Protection 
is  admirably  illustrated  by  the  case  of  Alsace- 
Lorraine  :  for  the  last  half-century  it  has  been 
"  protected  "  against  France ;  it  is  now  presumably, 
in  consequence  of  the  change  in  its  political 
allegiance,  to  be  "  protected  "  against  Germany. 
The  change  will  probably  be  very  injurious  to  the 
inhabitants  of  the  re-annexed  provinces,  whose  real 
interest,  like  that  of  everybody  else,  is  to  be  able  to 
buy  and  sell  freely  in  all  the  markets  of  the  world. 

Protection,  however,  far  from  being  gradually 
diminished  as  it  ought  to  be,  has  actually  been 
aggravated  since  the  Armistice,  indeed  it  has  been 


PROBLEMS  OF  RECONSTRUCTION  65 

carried  to  its  logical  conclusion.  The  profiteers  are 
no  longer  content  with  heavy  import  duties;  they 
insist  on  the  prohibition  of  imports.  They  are  no 
longer  content  to  keep  up  prices  by  limiting  pro- 
duction; they  demand  and  obtain  from  the 
Government  the  bolstering  up  of  prices  by  legal 
decree.  Early  in  1919,  because  the  French  paper 
manufacturers,  who  are  in  fact  a  powerful  Trust, 
had  large  stocks  of  paper  in  hand  and  the  price  of 
paper  was  beginning  to  fall,  M.  Loucheur,  the 
Minister  of  Reconstruction,  fixed  by  decree  mini- 
mum prices  of  paper  above  its  market  value.  Such 
was  M.  Loucheur 's  notion  of  reconstruction — and 
this  is  not  surprising,  since  M.  Loucheur  himself  is 
interested  in  a  large  number  of  industrial  concerns 
and  has  made  a  huge  fortune  during  the  war.  It 
was  the  great  war  magnates  of  industry  who 
manoeuvred  him  into  the  Ministry  of  Reconstruc- 
tion. It  was  an  easy  matter,  since,  as  I  have 
already  said,  M.  Clemenceau  knows  nothing  of 
economic  questions  and  takes  no  interest  in  them ; 
no  doubt  he  quite  innocently  imagined  that  the  best 
Minister  of  Reconstruction  would  be  a  successful 
business  man.  Once  in  the  Ministry  of  Reconstruc- 
tion, M.  Loucheur  adopted  the  policy  that  suited 
his  friends,  and  explained  to  the  country  that  the 
prohibition  of  imports  was  necessary  to  keep  up 
the  rate  of  exchange.1  All  importation  was 

1  The  great  French  war  magnates  of  industry  "  kave  succeeded 
in  putting  one  of  their  number,  the  most  active  and  the  most 
intelligent,  at  the  head  of  the  Ministry  charged  with  controlling 
them.  To  him,  Minister  and  man  of  business,  representing  at 
the  same  time  both  the  nation  and  those  who  supply  it,  falls 
the  task  of  showing  that  the  interests  of  his  two  employers  are 
identical.  He  has  done  it  with  remarkable  cleverness  by  evoking 
the  spectre  of  the  exchange.  '  Take  care,'  he  says,  '  if  you  buy 
English  cloth  or  American  machines,  you  are  going  to  depreciate 
our  currency.'  The  French  public,  including  the  members  of 
Parliament,  are  not  familiar  with  the  machinery  of  international 

F 


66  MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

forbidden  without  the  express  permission  of  the 
Ministry  of  Reconstruction,  except  in  the  case  of 
raw  material  in  the  most  restricted  sense  of 
the  term — "  matieres  brutes  "  as  distinct  from 
"  matieres  premieres  "  in  general.  The  Roubaix 
spinners  were  prevented  by  the  Government  from 
importing  machinery  that  they  had  bought  in 
America,  Ford  motor-cars  bought  by  the  State  were 
left  to  rust  in  the  port  of  Bordeaux,  although  there 
were  no  motor-cars  to  be  had  in  France,  and, 
whereas  the  clothing  trades  estimated  the  minimum 
quantity  of  imported  cloth  and  dress  material  that 
they  would  require  for  the  second  quarter  of  1919 
at  9,000  tons,  they  were  allowed  to  import  during 
that  period  less  than  1,000  tons.1 

The  "  spectre  of  the  exchange,"  to  use 
M.  Delaisi's  phrase,  for  a  time  obtained  general 
acquiescence  in  this  "  economic  Malthusianism,"  as 
M.  Gustave  Tery,  editor  of  L'CEuvre,  has  happily 
called  it,  but  as  the  exchange  fell  against  France  in 
spite  of  the  prohibition  of  imports,  and  as  several 
industries  besides  the  clothing  trades  suffered 
severely  from  the  prohibition,  public  opinion  began 
to  change.  An  energetic  and  most  useful  cam- 
paign against  M.  Loucheur's  policy  was  carried  on 
in  L'CEuvre,  which  frankly  advocated  Free  Trade, 
and — what  was  most  significant  of  all — the  General 
Confederation  of  Labour  in  a  manifesto  issued  on 

payments.  But  they  are  very  much  alive  to  the  idea  that  the 
bank-note  of  a  hundred  francs  which  they  have  in  their  pocket 
may  become  worth  only  eighty.  They  have  seen  in  imports  the 
spectre  of  bankruptcy  ;  and  deputies,  Press,  public,  everybody 
has  approved  the  policy  of  M.  Loucheur."  (M.  Francis  Delaisi, 
Manchester  Guardian,  May  15,  1919.) 

1  Perhaps  the  most  astonishing  example  of  this  policy  was  the 
refusal  of  the  French  Government  either  to  buy  itself  or  allow 
anybody  else  to  buy  any  of  the  unused  material  and  supplies 
of  the  American  Army.  The  refusal  provoked  such  strong 
protests  that  the  Government  was  ultimately  obliged  to  yield  to 
public  opinion  and  purchase  the  whole  stock* 


PROBLEMS  OF  RECONSTRUCTION  67 

June  11,  1919,  denounced  "  the  closing  of  the 
frontiers  "  and  prohibitive  tariffs  as  being  among 
the  principle  causes  of  the  high  cost  of  living  and 
declared  that  they  would  bring  France  to  ruin  and 
violence.  The  manifesto  asked  whether  the 
Government  was  in  the  hands  of  private  interests 
or  whether  it  had  no  conception  of  the  general 
interest. 

I  fear  that  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the 
Government — or  rather  M.  Loucheur — was  in- 
fluenced by  regard  for  private  rather  than  public 
interests.  The  story  of  this  conspiracy  to  sacrifice 
the  interests  of  the  French  people  to  those  of  a  few 
capitalists  is  so  disgraceful  that  I  prefer  to  leave  a 
Frenchman  to  tell  it  and  will  simply  quote  the 
account  of  it  given  with  consummate  irony  by 
M.  Delaisi  in  his  article  in  the  Manchester  Guardian 
already  referred  to.  As  I  have  said,  during  the  war 
factories  were  established  in  the  uninvaded  territory 
to  supply  the  Government  with  war  material ;  in 
many  cases  they  were  established  by  manufacturers 
that  had  escaped  from  the  invaded  districts,  to 
whom  the  Government  lent  capital  without  interest 
when  they  required  it.  All  these  factories  were 
working  at  high  pressure  when  the  Armistice  came. 
It  was  hurriedly  decided,  M.  Delaisi  said,  to  adapt 
the  workshops  to  peace  uses,  but  this  would  take 
time.  Meanwhile.  American  and  English  missions 
hurried  to  France  and  "  offered  us,"  said  M.  Delaisi, 
"whatever  we  needed  and  at  a  low  price."  But 
this  would  not  suit  the  French  manufacturers,  who 
would  have  "  to  produce  less,  to  sell  cheaper,  to 
forego  fat  dividends  and  big  salaries — those  compen- 
sations for  dear  living."  Moreover,  "  the  greater 
part  of  the  new  industries  had  been  established  in 
unfavourable  conditions.  Far  from  the  sources  of 
their  raw  materials,  or  from  their  markets,  the  net 

F  2 


68  MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

costs  would  be  burdened  with  heavy  transport 
charges.  That  did  not  matter  so  long  as  they  were 
working  for  the  State,  which  always  paid  very  well. 
But  if  one  opened  the  market  to  foreign  competition 
it  was  clear  that  many  of  our  factories  placed  in 
exceptional  and  artificial  positions  would  not  be 
able  to  survive.  Certainly  their  owners  would  not 
be  ruined  by  that,  for  the  greater  number  of  them 
had  had  all  their  capital  repaid  in  interest  in  four 
years;  but  one  does  not  easily  resign  oneself  to 
closing  down  a  business  when  it  is  doing  well,  which 
has  cost  so  much  trouble  and  yielded  such  good 
profits."  So  the  chief  manufacturers  agreed  on  the 
policy  of  closing  the  French  market  to  all  manu- 
factured goods  and  restricting  the  importations 
"  to  absolutely  indispensable  materials — coal,  steel, 
sheet-iron,  wool  and  cotton,"  and  this  was  the 
policy  adopted  by  their  representative  at  the 
Ministry  of  Reconstruction.  It  will  take  hardly 
more  than  a  year  or  two,  when  the  factories  have 
been  converted,  to  restore  industry  in  uninvaded 
France,  and,  meanwhile  the  invaded  districts 
must  wait.  Instead  of  reconstructing  the  invaded 
territory  as  quickly  as  possible  and  enabling  its 
industry  to  be  revived,  the  policy  was  adopted  of 
exploiting  the  invaded  territory  for  the  benefit  of 
factories  working  in  artificial  conditions  and,  there- 
fore, at  a  disadvantage  in  regard  to  the  foreign 
market. 

'l(  Happily  we  have  at  hand  "  —I  quote  M.  Delaisi 
— "  inside  our  own  frontiers  a  new  land,  a  country 
known  to  be  exceedingly  rich.  The  soil  is  fertile, 
coal  and  iron  abundant.  There  all  is  destroyed; 
everything  has  to  be  remade — mine  shafts,  props, 
blast  furnaces,  steel  factories,  weaving  mills, 
buildings,  towns,  farms,  agricultural  implements. 
Work  costing  sixty  milliards  is  waiting  to  be  done 


PROBLEMS  OF  RECONSTRUCTION  69 

there,  according  to  the  official  report.  What  more 
extensive  markets  could  you  dream  of?  What  is 
Morocco,  what  is  Indo-China  compared  with  these 
ten  departments  waiting  to  be  rebuilt  ?  But  it  is 
essential  that  Allied  products  should  not  penetrate 
them,  for  in  a  year  or  so  reconstruction  would  come 
to  an  end  and  by  the  time  our  factories  were  ready 
the  market  would  have  disappeared.  Let  us  close 
them,  then,  to  the  foreign  importer  as  we  have 
closed  Algeria  or  Madagascar.  We  have  no  diplo- 
matic difficulties  to  fear;  the  devastated  regions, 
happily,  are  in  France.  Already  a  Reconstruction 
Office  controls  all  buying  from  outside,  and  it  has 
forbidden  anybody  to  import  the  least  thing  without 
its  permission.  At  this  rate  the  reconstruction 
process  will  doubtless  be  a  little  slow.  M.  Loucheur 
stated  in  Parliament  that  it  would  not  begin 
seriously  for  two  years.  It  will  take  at  least  two 
years  more  to  re-establish  our  steel  works,  five  or 
six  to  set  certain  mines  going,  and,  according  to  an 
official  report,  all  the  houses  cannot  be  rebuilt  for 
sixteen  years.  It  seems  that  our  devastated 
regions  will  have  to  wait  until  the  factories  behind 
them  are  ready  to  work  for  them.  They  will  have 
to  regulate  their  needs  to  suit  the  convenience  of 
those  who  will  supply  them.  It  would  be  wrong  to 
exhaust  too  quickly  a  market  like  this.  It  is 
necessary  to  avoid  jolts,  to  stabilise  production  so 
as  to  prevent  crises,  to  make  sure  of  big  dividends, 
and  to  prepare  for  gradual  liquidation.  As  to  the 
refugees,  there  is  no  need  to  trouble  about  them. 
The  majority  of  the  great  manufacturers  of  the 
north  and  east  have  set  up  their  factories  behind  the 
war  zone.  They  are  more  concerned  about  the 
prosperity  of  those  who  are  doing  well  than  of  those 
who  are  ruined.  As  to  the  workmen,  in  the  past 
four  years  many  of  them  have  become  accustomed 


70  MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

to  working  in  new  districts.  As  to  the  peasants, 
so  attached  to  the  place  of  their  birth,  so  eager  to 
restore  their  ruined  farms,  the  providential  in- 
difference of  the  Government  officials  has  already 
succeeded  in  discouraging  them.  The  greater  part 
of  those  who  went  back  in  the  first  days  have  been 
maddened  by  the  delays  and  are  returning.  Thus 
the  new  industries  born  of  the  war,  well  protected 
against  foreign  competition,  assured  of  an  impor- 
tant market  on  the  spot,  can  develop  at  their  ease 
and  look  to  the  future  with  confidence."1 

The  cynical  indifference  of  the  capitalist  classes 
to  the  general  welfare  of  the  community  could 
hardly  be  better  illustrated  than  by  this  plot  to 
exploit  the  miseries  and  sufferings  caused  by  the 
invasion  for  the  benefit  of  a  few  profiteers.  Nor 
could  there  be  a  better  example  of  the  working  of 
Protection,  for  the  plot  is  only  a  logical  application 
of  Protectionist  principles,  which  mean  the  sacri- 
fice of  the  many  to  the  few.  Since  M.  Delaisi's 
article  was  written  the  prohibition  of  imports  has 
been  cancelled  in  regard  to  a  considerable  number 
of  products,  but  the  relief  is  little  more  than 
nominal,  for  import  duties  have  been  increased  all 
round,  in  some  cases  as  much  as  200  per  cent.,  in 
order  to  protect  the  profiteers.  Many  imports  are 
subject,  in  addition,  to  the  ad  valorem  luxury  tax 
of  10  per  cent.2 

The  domination  of  the  great  industrial  magnates, 

1  Manchester  Guardian,  May  15,  1919. 

*  The  neglect  by  the  Government  of  the  devastated  region 
has  caused  such  profound  discontent  among  the  inhabitants 
that  they  have  taken  the  matter  into  their  own  hands  and 
formed  a  "  States -General  "  with  local  branches  everywhere. 
There  is  a  strong  feeling  among  them  in  favour  of  decentralisation 
and  they  have  declared  war  on  the  bureaucracy.  Ten  months 
after  the  Armistice  nothing  had  been  done  even  to  begin  the 
restoration  of  the  invaded  districts  and  many  places  were  still 
without  drinking  water. 


PROBLEMS  OF  RECONSTRUCTION  71 

of  which  these  restrictions  are  the  result,  is  a  grave 
evil,  and  France  must  be  freed  from  it  if  she  is  to 
recover  herself.  She  must  also  be  freed  from  the 
domination  of  the  financiers.  In  all  countries  the 
"influence  of  High  Finance  is  very  great — it  is  the 
inevitable  result  of  the  modern  capitalist  system 
and,  so  long  as  that  system  continues,  it  will  go  on 
increasing — but  in  no  country  are  the  financiers  so 
powerful  as  in  France.  The  great  banks  and  the 
financial  interests  control  the  Government,  Parlia- 
ment, and  the  Press  to  a  very  great  extent,  and  their 
power  is  all  the  more  dangerous  since  it  works  in 
secret  and  is  not  visible  to  the  public.  The  public 
does  not  and  cannot  know,  for  instance,  that  behind 
this  or  that  Press  campaign,  which  seems  to  be 
actuated  by  patriotic  motives,  are  the  influence 
and  the  funds  of  some  great  financiers  in  whose 
interest  the  campaign  has  really  been  started ;  that 
the  opposition  in  Parliament  to  this  or  that  reform 
is  really  instigated  by  the  financial  interests  work- 
ing in  the  lobbies  and  using  every  form  of  pressure 
on  senators  and  deputies.  I  confess  that  I  see  no 
remedy  for  this  state  of  things  except  that  of  a 
complete  change  in  the  social  and  economi3  system. 
Anti-semitism  is  not  a  remedy,  for  the  great 
financiers  are  by  no  means  all  Jews;  some  of  them 
are  excellent  Catholics.  Indeed  anti-semitism 
plays  the  game  of  the  financiers  and  the  capitalists 
bv  diverting  attention  from  the  real  causes  of  the 
evil.  If  the  French  or  any  other  people  could  be 
convinced  that  what  really  mattered  was  not  the 
svstem  which  makes  financiers  possible,  but  the 
shape  of  the  financiers'  noses,  that  would  be  an 
excellent  thing  for  those  financiers  whose  noses 
happened  to  be  straight.  The  anti-semitic  move- 
ment in  France  in  the  last  decade  of  the  nineteenth 
century  strengthened  the  financial  interests  and 


72  MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

also  turned  out  ultimately  to  the  advantage  of  the 
Jews.  When  the  public  discovered  the  baselessness 
of  the  charges  made  against  the  Jews,  it  jumped 
to  the  conclusion  that  the  financiers  were  less 
mischievous  than  had  been  supposed,  and  it  came 
to  be  thought  reactionary  to  say  anything  against 
a  Jew  even  when  he  deserved  it.  At  the  bottom  of 
much  anti-semitism  is  the  notion  that  it  is  the 
cosmopolitanism  of  High  Finance  that  is  the 
danger,  as  if  the  war  had  not  shown  that  it  is 
Nationalism  that  is  the  enemy  of  humanity.  In 
fact,  the  only  advantage  of  High  Finance  is  that, 
being  cosmopolitan,  it  is  always  an  influence  for 
peace.  It  helped  to  prevent  war  in  1911  and  the 
fact  that  it  failed  to  stop  it  in  1914  only  proves  that 
even  cosmopolitan  Finance  is  as  powerless  as  the 
Christian  religion  to  stem  the  tide  of  national 
hatreds  and  patriotic  rabies. 

The  chief  reasons  for  the  exceptional  power 
and  influence  of  the  financiers  in  France  are 
pfobably  the  centralised  administration  and  the 
commercial  timidity  which  leads  the  great  majority 
of  French  investors  to  refuse  their  money  to  in- 
dustrial enterprises  and  prefer  safe  securities  such 
as  Government  loans.  This  has  made  France  the 
money-lending  country  of  the  world,  and  in  a 
money-lending  country  the  money-lender  is 
naturally  top  dog. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE   ADMINISTRATIVE  AND   POLITICAL  SYSTEMS 

"  The  Penguin  State  was  democratic.  Three  or  four  financial 
companies  exercised  in  it  a  power  more  extensive  and  above  all 
more  effective  and  constant  than  that  of  the  Ministers  of  the 
Republic,  petty  potentates  whom  the  companies  secretly  managed, 
whom  they  obliged  by  intimidation  or  corruption  to  favour 
them  at  the  expense  of  the  State  and  whom  they  destroyed  by 
calumnies  in  the  Press  when  they  remained  honest." — ANATOLB 
FRANCE 

No  people  are  more  ready  than  the  French  to 
admit  that  their  political  institutions  are  defective ; 
indeed  they  are  inclined  to  exaggerate  their  defects. 
Most  Frenchmen  will  tell  you  that  politicians  are 
without  exception  a  set  of  unprincipled  and  self- 
seeking  intriguers  actuated  by  nothing  but  a  desire 
to  improve  their  own  position  financially  or  other- 
wise, that  Parliament  does  nothing  but  talk,  that 
one  Government  is  as  bad  as  another,  and  that  the 
Administration  is  corrupt  from  top  to  bottom  and 
hopelessly  incompetent.  It  is  a  curious  paradox 
that,  whereas  Frenchmen  are  often  inclined  to  look 
upon  the  State  as  a  sort  of  universal  providence  and 
to  appeal  to  it  on  every  possible  occasion,  they 
nevertheless  have  the  lowest  possible  opinion  of  it 
and  take  for  granted  that  it  will  mismanage  any- 
thing that  it  touches.  Naturally  the  French  are 

73 


74  MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

individualists;  by  tradition  and  training  they  are 
often  "Etatistes."1 

Some  Frenchmen  attribute  the  defects  that  they 
find  in  their  political  institutions  to  democracy. 
There  has  been,  partly  on  that  account,  a  consider- 
able reaction  during  recent  years  in  the  bourgeoisie 
against  democratic  institutions  and  the  republican 
form  of  government.  The  reaction  has  been  par- 
ticularly marked  among  the  intellectuals,  many  of 
whom  have  passed  from  democratic  and  even  revo- 
lutionary opinions  to  the  advocacy  of  "  strong 
government  "  and  increased  authority,  and  even  of 
Royalism  pure  and  simple.  And  Royalism  in 
France  in  its  only  active  form  means  the  restoration 
of  absolute  Monarchy.  The  Constitutional  Mon- 
archists— the  old  traditional  Orleanists — have  nearly 
all  rallied  quite  sincerely  to  the  Republic  and  are 
sometimes  stronger  defenders  of  popular  liberties 
and  constitutional  guarantees  than  many  so-called 
Radicals.  For,  as  the  late  M.  Paul  Thurpan- 
Dangin  explained  to  me  some  years  ago,  he  and  his 
friends,  although  they  preferred  a  constitutional 
Monarchy  to  a  Republic,  came  to  the  conclusion 
that  the  former  was  impossible  in  France  and 
therefore  rallied  to  the  Republic,  since  nothing 
would  induce  them  to  accept  an  absolute  Monarchy. 

*.  For  this  word,  as  for  "  e"tatisme,"  there  is  no  exact  English 
equivalent,  for  "  State  Socialism  "  is  not  an  accurate  trans- 
lation. "  Etatisme  "  need  not  necessarily  be  socialist  in  any 
sense  of  the  tonn.  "  Statism  "  would  be  a  literal  translation, 
but  it  is  an  ugly  word,  and  it  would  be  impossible  to  translate 
"  etatiste  "  by  "  statist,"  which  has  already  another  meaning. 
The  nearest  English  equivalent  of  "  e'tatisme "  is  "  State 
Capitalism,"  but  again  it  is  impossible  to  use  the  term  "  State 
Capitalist  "  for  "  e'tatiste."  On  the  whole  it  seems  best  to  use 
the  French  words  :  after  all  the  purist  objection  to  the  adoption 
of  any  foreign  term  is  rather  pedantic.  We  have  in  the  past 
adopted  many  foreign  words,  which  have  now  become  part  of  the 
language. 


THE  ADMINISTRATIVE  SYSTEM  75 

The  fate  of  Louis-Philippe  shows,  in  fact,  that  a 
constitutional  Monarchy  has  no  chance  of  success  in 
France ;  the  Monarchy  of  July  was  in  many  respects 
the  best  regime  that  France  had  during  the  nine- 
teenth century — it  was  certainly  the  most  pacific — 
but  it  did  not  last.  The  logical  French  mind  re- 
garded a  constitutional  Monarchy  as  an  absurdity ; 
Louis-Philippe  was  ridiculed  as  a  bourgeois  king 
perpetually  armed  with  an  umbrella.  And 
indeed,  whatever  may  be  said  for  the  British  system, 
which  has  grown  up  gradually,  it  is  an  absurdity  to 
set  up  a  constitutional  Monarchy  deliberately,  since 
there  is  no  advantage  in  making  the  presidency  of  a 
Republic  hereditary.  The  only  active  Royalist 
party  in  France  is  now  represented  by  the  organisa- 
tion known  as  the  Action  Fran£aise,  of  which 
M.  Charles  Maurras  and  M.  Leon  Daudet  are  the 
leaders.  Its  organ  in  the  Press,  which  has  the  same 
title,  is  notorious  for  the  scurrility  of  its  attacks  on 
Republicans  and  its  incitations  to  the  assassination 
of  prominent  French  public  men,  which  had  so 
deplorable  a  result  in  the  case  of  Jaures,  but  which 
have,  nevertheless,  been  allowed  to  continue  with 
astonishing  impunity  by  successive  Governments 
during  the  war.  The  Action  Francaise  advocates 
the  suppression  of  Parliament,  the  abolition  of 
democracy,  and  the  establishment  of  an  absolute 
Monarchy;  it  attacks  the  old  Royalists  that  will 
not  accept  its  programme  with  even  greater 
virulence  than  Republicans.  It  is  the  centre  of  the 
anti-democratic  reaction  and  derives  whatever  force 
it  may  possess  from  the  general  dissatisfaction  with 
the  present  regime. 

It  is  not,  however,  true  that  whatever  defects 
there  may  be  in  the  present  French  political 
institutions — and,  as  I  have  said,  those  defects  are 
often  exaggerated  by  Frenchmen  themselves — are 


76  MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

due  to  democracy.  It  cannot  be  true,  since  French 
political  institutions  are  not  democratic.  France 
has  a  Royalist  Constitution  and  a  Bonapartist 
Administration.  "  Plus  ga  change,  plus  c'est  la 
meme  chose,"  is  a  French  proverb  and  France  is 
the  country  of  which  it  is  true.  Herein  is  to  be 
found  one  of  the  greatest  differences  between  France 
and  England  :  in  England  we  preserve  the  form  and 
change  the  substance — we  cling  to  old  forms  such  as 
the  Monarchy  when  they  are  emptied  of  meaning 
and  have  ceased  to  have  any  practical  use;  in 
France  they  make  apparently  complete  changes  in 
the  form  and  preserve  the  substance.  To  a  super- 
ficial observer  it  would  appear  that  drastic  changes 
were  made  in  France  in  1870,  but,  in  fact,  the 
changes  were  mainly  external ;  in  reality  very 
little  was  changed.  The  present  French  system  of 
administration  is  in  all  essentials  and  in  spirit  the 
system  founded  by  Napoleon  I,  highly  centralised 
in  order  to  concentrate  all  real  power  in  the  hands 
of  the  National  Executive  and  thoroughly  anti- 
democratic. And  in  all  countries  the  administra- 
tion is  more  important  than  the  legislature,  for  the 
legislature  makes  laws,  but  the  administration 
applies  them — or  refrains  from  doing  so.  More- 
over, the  administration  comes  into  direct  contact 
with  the  daily  life  of  the  people,  whose  happiness 
depends  on  its  character  and  methods  more  than  on 
the  letter  of  the  law.  A  country  might  get  on  very 
well  without  a  Parliament  as  we  understand  it,  and 
would  probably  get  on  better  without  a  Govern- 
ment, but  it  could  not  exist  without  administra- 
tion. Government  and  administration  are  two 
different  things,  as  Saint-Simon  recognised  when  he 
proposed  that  the  administration  of  things  should 
be  substituted  for  the  government  of  men — the 
State  as  an  organ  of  administration  for  the  State  as 


THE  ADMINISTRATIVE  SYSTEM  77 

an  organ  of  authority.  M.  Emile  Vandervelde  has 
given  a  lucid  exposition  of  the  distinction  between 
these  two  functions  of  the  State  in  his  admirable 
little  book  "  Le  Socialisme  centre  1'Etat."1  The 
undemocratic  or  rather  anti-democratic  character 
of  the  French  administration  is  therefore  even 
more  important  and  more  pernicious  in  its  results 
than  the  undemocratic  elements  in  the  French 
Constitution.  It  is  particularly  because  the  English 
administrative  system  is  more  democratic  than  the 
French  that  England,  although  not  yet  a  demo- 
cracy, is  politically  the  more  democratic  country  of 
the  two,  although  it  preserves  monarchical  and 
aristocratic  forms  which  have  lost  their  substance, 
and  although  its  people  are  less  democratic  in  spirit 
than  the  French. 

In  the  case  of  the  administration  there  was  not 
even  a  nominal  change  in  France  after  the  fall  of 
the  Second  Empire;  the  constitutional  laws  by 
which  the  Third  Republic  functions  left  the  ad- 
ministration untouched.  And  the  system  that  they 
left  untouched  was  the  administrative  system  of 
Napoleon  I,  which  had  survived  without  any 
important  modification  all  the  successive  regimes 
of  the  nineteenth  century — the  Restoration,  the 
Monarchy  of  July,  the  Second  Republic,  and  the 
Second  Empire.  The  dead  hand  of  Napoleon  is  still 
laid  on  France.  That  the  system  of  Napoleon  was 
admirably  adapted  to  the  purposes  for  which  he 
designed  it  cannot  be  questioned  ;  Napoleon  was  one 
of  the  greatest  geniuses  that  the  world  has  ever 
seen  and  he  usually  hit  on  the  best  means  of  obtain- 
ing his  ends.  If  the  ideal  be  the  concentration  of 
all  power  in  the  hands  of  an  individual  or  a  central 
bureaucracy,  then  the  French  system  of  administra- 

1  Page  52.     Paris,  Berger-Lovrault.     English  translation  pub- 
lished by  Kerr,  Chicago,  U.S.A. 


78  MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

tion  is  an  ideal  one ;  but  it  is  totally  unsuited  to  a 
Republic  or  even  to  a  constitutional  Monarchy 
professing  to  be  based  on  democracy.  Local 
government  is  really  mainly  in  the  hands  of  the 
Prefects,  who  represent  the  Government  in 
each  department  and  whose  powers  are  still 
enormous,  although  the  Third  Republic  has  some- 
what extended  the  power  of  the  local  elected 
authorities.  Each  commune  in  France  has  a 
municipal  council  elected  by  manhood  suffrage, 
but  it  can  do  very  little  without  the  consent  of  the 
central  administration,  whose  approval  is  required 
for  such  purely  local  matters  as  the  making  of  a 
new  street  or  even  a  change  in  the  name  of  an  old 
one.  It  is  to  be  regretted  that  in  the  latter  case 
the  consent  of  the  central  authority  is  given  much 
too  easily,  with  the  result  that  all  over  France 
streets  whose  names  were  part  of  the  history  of  the 
country  have  been  rebaptised.  One  need  not  be  a 
clerical  to  regret  the  suppression  in  many  French 
towns  of  all  street  names  that  are  those  of  saints, 
nor  need  one  be  a  bad  Republican  to  regret  the  too 
frequent  attempts  to  obliterate  everything  that 
recalls  a  former  regime.  Troyes  is  one  of  the  towns 
where  this  lack  of  historical  sense  has  expressed 
itself  with  the  most  ruthless  universality,  sometimes 
it  would  seem  out  of  sheer  perversity.  Anti-clerical 
feeling  is  no  doubt  responsible  for  the  conversion  of 
the  rue  Notre-Dame  into  the  rue  Emile-Zola,  but 
what  could  have  induced  a  municipal  council  to 
suppress  so  delicious  a  title  as  "  rue  des  Trois- 
Pucelles,"  with  its  mediaeval  flavour,  in  favour  of 
the  name  of  an  obscure  general  ?  This  vandalism 
is  a  striking  example  of  the  iconoclasm  of  the 
French,  and  perhaps  also  of  their  excessive  suscep- 
tibility to  the  influence  of  words  and  phrases.  The 
founders  of  each  new  regime  have  thought  to 


THE  ADMINISTRATIVE  SYSTEM  79 

consolidate  it  by  obliterating  all  traces  of  its  prede- 
cessor. Alas  !  France  had  no  less  than  nine  regimes 
— if  the  Directorate  and  the  Consulate  be  considered 
separate  ones — in  the  course  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  and  I  do  not  think  that  the  survival  of 
the  Third  Republic  is  due  to  the  fact  that  there  is 
no  longer  a  Place  Roy  ale  hi  Paris. 

In  other  matters,  however,  the  central  authority 
is  much  less  complacent,  and  many  deficiencies  in 
local  administration  are  due,  at  least  in  part,  to  the 
paralysing  control  of  the  Government.  Since 
1884  the  municipal  councils  have  been  allowed 
to  elect  their  own  mayors,  who  up  to  that  time  were 
appointed  by  the  Government,  but  the  Government 
still  has  the  power  to  depose  the  mayor,  and  even 
to  dismiss  the  whole  council  at  its  will  and  plea- 
sure.1 The  unofficial  authority  exercised  by  the 
Prefect  and  his  subordinates,  the  sub-prefects,  is 
even  more  pernicious  than  their  official  powers; 
their  position  as  the  channels  of  favours  and  dis- 
favours, of  rewards  and  punishments,  enables  them 
to  exert  pressure  and  gives  them  enormous 
influence,  to  which  the  only  counterpoise  is  the 
equally  pernicious  influence  of  Senators  and 
Deputies.  France  will  never  be  a  democratic 
country  until  the  Prefects  and  sub-prefects  are 
abolished  and  much  larger  powers  are  given  to  the 

1  The  Prefect  has  the  power  to  suspend  a  mayor  for  not  more 
than  a  month  ;  the  period  of  suspension  may  be  increased  to 
three  months  by  the  Minister  of  the  Interior.  A  mayor  can  be 
deposed  only  by  a  Presidential  Decree  on  the  advice  of  the 
Government.  In  either  case  the  mayor  concerned  can  appeal  to 
the  Conseil  d'Etat,  but,  as  the  law  does  not  specify  the  reasons 
for  which  a  mayor  may  be  suspended  or  deposed,  an  appeal 
can  be  successful  only  on  technical  grounds  of  procedure.  The 
Prefect  can  also  suspend  a  whole  municipal  council  for  not  more 
than  a  month,  but  must  at  once  report  the  suspension  to  the 
Minister  of  the  Interior.  The  dissolution  of  a  municipal  council 
requires  a  Presidential  Decree.  There  is  no  appeal  except  on 
purely  technical  grounds. 


80          MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

local  authorities.  The  conseils-gtndrauac  and 
conseils  d'arrondissement,  which  answer  to  the 
county  councils  and  district  councils  in  England, 
have  even  less  power  than  the  municipalities.1 
The  Prefect  is  present  at  the  meetings  of  the  conseil- 
general  of  his  department  and  objects  whenever  it 
attempts  to  go  beyond  the  narrow  limits  assigned 
to  it.  The  municipal  council  of  Paris  is  even  more 
in  leading  strings  than  those  of  other  great  towns ; 
the  Prefect  of  the  Seine  and  the  Prefect  of  Police 
have  the  right  to  attend  its  meetings. 

French  education  is  as  highly  centralised  as  every- 
thing else.  Napoleon  deprived  the  universities  of 
their  independence  and  autonomy,  and  the  Univer- 
sity is  now  a  vast  national  organisation  under  the 
control  of  the  Ministry  of  Public  Instruction,  which 
comprises  all  the  public  educational  institutions  in 
France  from  the  elementary  school  up  to  the 
university  in  the  English  sense  of  the  term.  There 
is  no  variety  in  the  schools;  the  ideal  is  that  in 
every  school  of  the  same  class  throughout  the 
country  the  pupils  should  be  doing  exactly  the 
same  thing  at  exactly  the  same  hour.  There  are  no 
local  education  authorities,2  and  all  the  educational 

1  The  conseil-gin&ral  of  a  department  (answering  to  a  county 
council)  is  composed  of  one  representative  of  each  canton  in 
the  department,  no  matter  what  the  population  of  the  canton 
may  be.  It  may  meet  only  twice  a  year,  in  the  Spring  and  in 
August ;  the  duration  of  the  Spring  session  must  not  exceed  a 
fortnight,  and  that  of  the  August  session  a  month.  The  Govern- 
ment may  convene  a  conseil-gtntral  when  it  chooses,  and  the 
Prefect  must  convene  it  on  the  written  demand  of  two-thirds  of 
its  members  :  an  extraordinary  session  thus  convened  must  not 
last  longer  than  a  week.  The  powers  of  the  conseil-gentral  are 
very  limited  and  principally  concern  the  finances  of  the  depart- 
ment. 

*  There  is  a  "  Council  of  Primary  Instruction  "  in  each  depart- 
ment consisting  of  the  Prefect,  the  chief  School  Inspector 
("  Inspecteur  d'acad£mie "),  four  delegates  from  the  conseil- 
gtntral,  four  elementary  school  teachers  (two  men  and  two 


THE  ADMINISTRATIVE  SYSTEM  81 

staff  from  the  elementary-school  teacher  to  the 
university  professor  are  appointed  or  revoked,  pro- 
moted or  degraded,  by  the  Government,  which 
moves  them  from  one  place  to  another  at  will.  This 
means  in  practice  that  the  career  of  an  elementary- 
school  teacher,  at  any  rate,  depends  on  enjoying 
the  favour  of  the  Prefect  and  of  the  local  Senators 
and  Deputies.  The  one  power  in  regard  to  educa- 
tion that  is  left  to  a  local  authority  is  the  very  one 
that  ought  not  to  be — the  enforcement  of  the  law 
in  regard  to  compulsory  attendance  at  school.  The 
authority  whose  duty  it  is  to  enforce  it  is  the  mayor, 
with  the  result  that  it  is  not  enforced  in  the  rural 
districts  because  the  mayor  dares  not  prosecute  his 
constituents.  In  the,  greater  part  of  rural  France 
all,  or  nearly  all,  the  children  go  to  school  because 
their  parents  are  enlightened  enough  to  understand 
the  value  of  education ;  in  Champagne,  for  example, 
nearly  all  the  parents  sent  their  children  to  school 
before  education  was  made  compulsory.  But  in  the 
reactionary  districts  the  children  are  sent  to  work  in 
the  fields  at  the  age  of  eight — although  child-labour 
is  illegal — and  go  to  school  intermittently,  or  in 
some  cases  not  at  all.  In  general,  school  attend- 
ance is  regular  in  anti-clerical  districts  and  irregu- 
lar in  districts  where  the  Church  is  strong.  Many 
of  the  country  clergy  denounce  the  schools  from  the 
pulpit  and  provide  the  peasants  with  a  religious  dis- 
guise for  the  avarice  and  selfishness  which  make 

women)  elected  by  their  colleagues,  and  two  school  inspectors 
nominated  by  the  Minister  of  Public  Instruction.  But  this 
council,  which  meets  as  a  rule  only  four  times  a  year,  has  only 
powers  of  supervision  and  recommendation.  Its  chief  duty  is 
to  see  that  the  regulations  are  observed  in  the  schools  ;  it  has 
no  real  share  in  their  management  and  no  voice  in  the  appoint- 
ment of  teachers.  The  Council  of  Primary  Instruction  appoints 
one  or  more  delegates  to  look  after  the  schools  in  each  canton 
of  the  department  and  repor*-  to  it  as  to  their  conduct. 

G 


82  MY  SECOND  COUNTRY 

them  deprive  their  children  of  education  in  order  to 
exploit  their  labour.  For  years  people  interested 
in  education  in  France  have  been  demanding  that 
the  enforcement  of  the  compulsory  education  law 
should  be  taken  out  of  the  hands  of  the  mayors  and 
entrusted  to  inspectors  independent  of  electoral 
considerations,  but  nothing  has  been  done,  although 
the  proportion  of  illiterates  in  France  is  disgrace- 
fully high.1 

To  sum  up,  the  French  administration  is  a  cen- 
tralised bureaucracy  which  spreads  its  tentacles 
over  the  whole  country  and  controls  the  life  of  the 
people  through  its  agents,  discouraging  individual 
initiative  and  enforcing  an  arid  uniformity  without 
regard  for  regional  differences.  It  has  many  arbi- 
trary powers  and  closely  resembles  Russian  admin- 
istration under  the  Tsars.  It  is  hierarchical  in  its 
organisation,  each  member  of  it  having  an  exactly 
defined  position  in  regard  to  his  superiors  and  his 
subordinates.  Its  methods  are  unintelligent  and 
often  vexatious,  and  it  is  swathed  in  red  tape.  The 
officials  regard  themselves,  not  as  the  servants,  but 
as  the  masters  of  the  public,  and  act  accordingly. 
Nobody  can  go  into  a  Parisian  post-office  without 
being  made  to  feel  that,  and  the  post-office  officials 
are  modest  and  obliging  in  comparison  with  the 
officials  of  a  Government  department.  Here  are  a 
few  examples  of  what  the  French  themselves  so  ap- 
propriately call  the  "  chinoiserie  "  of  the  adminis- 
tration. A  few  years  ago  I  wrote  to  the  Prefecture 
of  the  Seine  claiming  a  small  reduction  in  taxes  to 
which  I  was  entitled  owing  to  the  fact  that  I  had 
children  under  sixteen.  Months  went  by  without 
any  acknowledgment  of  the  letter,  and  I  had 

1  According  to  a  statement  made  at  the  national  congress  of 
the  General  Confederation  of  Labour  at  Lyons  on  September  16, 
1919,  adult  illiterates  are  5  per  cent,  of  the  population. 


THE  ADMINISTRATIVE  SYSTEM  83 

forgotten  all  about  the  matter  when,  more  than  a 
year  after  my  application,  I  at  last  received  a  reply 
informing  me  that  my  application  ought  to  have 
been  made  on  stamped  paper  and  that  I  could 
appeal  to  the  Conseil  d'Etat.1  On  another  occasion 
I  telegraphed  a  certain  sum  of  money  from  London 
to  a  member  of  my  family  in  Paris,  who  duly  pre- 
sented the  telegraphic  money  order  at  the  post  office 
indicated  therein.  As  she  could  not  produce  papers 
of  identification  satisfactory  to  the  gentleman  with 
whom  she  dealt,  he  told  her  that  she  must  bring  two 
witnesses  to  prove  her  identity.  She  returned  to 
the  post  office,  bringing  with  her  the  concierge  of 
the  house  in  which  we  lived  and  a  friend  who  occu- 
pied another  flat  in  the  same  house.  Their  papers, 
too,  were  considered  insufficient  and  they  were  told 
that  each  of  them  must  bring  two  more  witnesses. 
At  that  point  the  holder  of  the  money  order  gave 
up  the  enterprise  in  despair  and  borrowed  the 
money  from  a  friend  of  mine.  If  she  had  known  it, 
she  had  only,  when  the  telegram  was  delivered,  to 
write  on  it  a  request  for  payment  "  a  domicile  " 
and  return  it  to  the  messenger,  and  the  money  would 
have  been  brought  to  her  from  the  post  office. 
The  post  office  official  with  whom  she  had  to  do  was, 
of  course,  well  aware  of  that  fact  and  deliberately 
abstained  from  giving  her  the  information.  What 
else  would  one  expect  ?  He  was  there  to  "  embeter 
le  public."  One  more  example  will  suffice.  A 
person  desiring  to  change  a  number  of  sheets  of 
stamped  paper  for  sheets  of  a  different  individual 

1  The  Conseil  d'Etat  is  a  supreme  Court  with  both  executive 
and  judicial  functions.  It  is  the  final  Court  of  Appeal  for  all 
cases  coming  within  the  scope  of  the  droit  administratif.  It 
has  not  the  power  of  the  American  Supreme  Court  to  decide 
whether  a  law  is  constitutional.  The  French  Parliament  is 
supreme  :  laws  passed  by  it  cannot  be  revised,  and  there  is  no 
means  of  bringing  it  to  book  if  it  acts  unconstitutionally. 

G   2 


84  MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

value  presented  himself  at  the  central  office  for  the 
sale  of  stamped  paper.  There  he  was  told  that  if 
the  sheets  had  been  soiled  so  as  to  be  unusable  they 
could  have  been  exchanged,  but  as  they  were  per- 
fectly clean  it  was  impossible  to  take  them  back. 
He  promptly  soiled  them  with  his  boots  end  the 
exchange  was  effected.  I  mentioned  this  pleasing 
incident  to  a  high  official  of  the  French  administra- 
tion, who  admitted  that  the  regulation  hi  question 
seemed  hardly  reasonable  or  profitable  to  the  State, 
but  said  that  there  might  be  some  reason  for  it 
hidden  from  ordinary  intelligences,  and  that  in  any 
case  the  duty  of  the  official  was  to  follow  the  regu- 
lation blindly.  I  ventured  tentatively  to  suggest 
that  in  a  Government  department,  as  in  a  private 
business  concern,  some  room  might  be  left  for  the 
Exercise  of  individual  discretion.  He  was  horrified 
at  the  idea.  If,  he  said,  any  sort  of  individual  ini- 
tiative or  discretion  were  left  to  Government  offi- 
cials, the  whole  fabric  of  the  State  would  crumble 
to  pieces.  I  remained  unconvinced. 

These  are  but  typical  examples  of  the  methods  of 
an  administration  which  seems  to  have  been 
modelled  on  that  of  ancient  China,  and  which  is 
founded  on  the  principle  that  the  individual  was 
made  for  the  State  and  not  the  State  for  the  indi- 
vidual. At  the  head  of  this  great  bureaucratic 
machine  are  the  Ministers,  all-powerful  dispensers 
of  places,  decorations,  tobacco  agencies  and  other 
favours,  which  they  shower  on  a  grateful  country 
through  the  intermediary  of  Senators,  Deputies 
and  Prefects.  And  behind  the  Ministers  are  the 
real  rulers  of  France — those  who  pull  the  strings — 
the  Bank  of  France,  the  Credit  Foncier,  the  railway 
companies,  the  great  financial  and  industrial  in- 
terests. Anatole  France  once  asked  a  Minister  why 
all  French  Governments  were  equally  impotent  in 


THE  ADMINISTRATIVE  SYSTEM  85 

the  matter  of  social  reform.  "  What  do  you  expect 
us  to  do  ?  "  was  the  reply ;  "  the  Minister  of  Finance 
is  at  the  Credit  Lyonnais,  the  Minister  of  Marine  at 
Creusot,  the  Minister  of  War  on  the  Commissions, 
and  so  on."  The  reply  may  not  have  been  literally 
true,  but  it  was  at  least  a  symbolical  representation 
of  the  truth ;  it  is  this  highly  centralised  undemo- 
cratic system  of  administration  that  enables  a  hand- 
ful of  capitalists  and  financiers  to  keep  so  firm  a 
grip  on  France.  The  more  centralised  the  power  is 
in  any  country,  the  fewer  the  hands  in  which  it  is 
concentrated,  the  easier  it  is  to  capture  it.  The 
excessive  powers  of  the  Central  Executive  in  France 
make  its  capture  by  hidden  influences  easier  than 
in  many  other  countries.  The  evil  has  been  aggra- 
vated by  the  abuse  of  the  doctrine  of  the  separation 
of  the  legislative  and  executive  powers,  which  is 
interpreted  as  meaning  that  the  legislature, 
although  it  has  the  right  to  dismiss  a  Government 
of  whose  policy  it  disapproves,  has  no  right  to  inter- 
fere in  the  details  of  administration,  with  the  result 
that  the  Executive  is  subject  to  no  effective  control 
and  becomes  almost  omnipotent.  In  France  the 
raison  d'6tat  is  supreme ;  the  individual  has  hardly 
any  rights  against  the  State. 

One  has  only  to  look  back  at  the  history  of 
France  in  the  nineteenth  century  to  see  that  the 
centralised  administration  has  been  the  most  power- 
ful instrument  of  conservatism  and  reaction,  the 
greatest  obstacle  to  the  triumph  of  democracy.  It 
was  the  centralised  administrative  system  that 
enabled  the  Royalists  under  Louis  XVIII  and 
Charles  X  to  establish  the  White  Terror,  to  restore 
the  ancien  regime,  and  to  keep  France  under  their 
Heel  for  fifteen  years,  until  the  only  remedy  for 
oppression  was  insurrection.  When  at  last  the 
Parisian  democracy  revolted  in  1880,  the  bour- 


86  MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

geoisie,  thanks  to  the  defection  of  Lafayette,  pre- 
vented the  creation  of  a  Republic,  which  would 
almost  certainly  have  proved  a  stable  and  lasting 
form  of  government;  and  it  was  the  centralised 
administration  that  enabled  the  bourgeoisie  to 
retain  the  mastery  of  the  country  during  the  eigh- 
teen years  of  the  Monarchy  of  July.  It  was  again 
the  centralised  administration  that  made  it  possible 
for  Napoleon  III  to  be  Dictator  of  France  for 
twenty-two  years  with  the  aid  of  the  Church;  "  to 
secure  himself  against  the  claims  of  liberty,"  said 
the  Catholic  Montalembert,  "  he  needed  the  support 
of  both  the  guard-room  and  the  sacristy."  And  it 
has  been  the  centralised  administration  that  has 
preserved  the  domination  of  the  bourgeoisie — of  the 
financial  and  industrial  magnates — under  the  Third 
Republic,  and  has  neutralised  the  democratic  ele- 
ments in  the  French  Constitution.  A  dictator  or  a 
bureaucracy  armed  with  such  an  instrument  as  the 
French  administrative  system  can  secure  the  abso- 
lute mastery  of  the  country  and  reduce  opposition 
to  impotence  unless  and  until  it  becomes  revolt. 
That  is  why  France  had  three  revolutions  in  the 
nineteenth  century  and  is  likely  to  have  a  fourth 
in  the  twentieth.  "France,"  said  the  Constitu- 
tional Monarchist  Royer-Collard  nearly  a  century 
ago,  "  is  a  bureau-governed  nation  in  the  hands  of 
irresponsible  officials  directed  by  the  hand  of  a 
central  power  whose  instruments  they  are.  .  .  . 
Centralisation  has  made  us  a  nation  of  slaves  to  an 
irresponsible  bureaucracy  which  is  itself  centralised 
in  the  hands  of  the  Government  of  which  it  is  the 
instrument."  That  is  as  true  in  1919  as  it  was  in 
1823. 

No  department  of  the  French  administration  is 
so  anti-democratic  as  the  Secret  Police,  which  is 
under  the  control  of  the  Ministry  of  the  Interior; 


THE  ADMINISTRATIVE  SYSTEM  87 

its  methods  resemble  those  of  the  Russian  Secret 
Police  under  the  Tsardom,  and  it  exists  more  for 
political  purposes  than  for  the  prevention  and  detec- 
tion of  crime.  If  the  proportion  of  undetected 
crimes  in  France  is  abnormally  high,  it  is  because 
the  detective  service  is  so  much  occupied  in  track- 
ing the  political  opponents  of  the  Government  of 
the  day  that  it  has  little  leisure  for  tracking  crimi- 
nals. Its  spies  are  everywhere  :  every  political  and 
labour  organisation  is  full  of  them,  especially 
such  as  have  or  are  supposed  to  have  a  revolu- 
tionary tendency.  The  imagination  reels  at  the 
thought  of  the  vast  quantities  of  paper  and  ink  that 
must  be  wasted  on  reports  of  the  meetings  of  a 
Socialist  section  or  a  Trade  Union  branch.  The 
unfortunate  officials  that  have  to  read  such  reports 
are  much  to  be  pitied,  for,  as  may  be  imagined, 
the  information  given  in  them  is  usually  far  from 
accurate.  The  police  spy  invariably  betrays  both 
his  employers  and  the  organisation  on  which  he 
spies,  and  as  his  pay  depends  on  the  information 
that  he  supplies,  when  interesting  information  is 
lacking  he  has  to  invent  it.  The  system  produces 
an  atmosphere  of  distrust  and  suspicion,  and  leads 
to  constant  accusations  of  spying  by  members  of 
political  and  labour  organisations  against  one 
another.  It  also  leads  to  grave  abuses  and  injus- 
tices :  a  police  agent  can  always  either  denounce  as 
a  spy  to  his  comrades  an  individual  against  whom 
he  has  a  personal  grudge,  or  else  send  false  reports 
about  his  words  or  actions  to  the  police  authorities ; 
he  rarely  fails  to  use  the  opportunity.  What  is  worst 
of  all  is  that  the  spy  easily  becames  an  agent  provo- 
cateur, for  the  French  Political  Police  unhappily 
resorts  to  the  detestable  method  of  manufacturing 
crime  in  order  to  have  the  credit  of  repressing  it. 
One  of  the  worst  examples  of  this  system  was  the 


88  MY  SECOND   COUNTRY 

famous  case  of  Metivier,  at  the  time  of  the  great 
strikes  in  1908  which  culminated  in  the  massacres  of 
the  strikers  by  the  military  at  Villeneuve-St.  Georges 
and  Draveil.  Metivier,  who  was  a  Trade  Union 
secretary,  was  one  of  the  chief  instigators  of  the 
strikers  to  acts  of  violence.  He  was  arrested,  and 
there  was  an  interpellation  on  his  arrest  in  the 
Chamber  of  Deputies.  M.  Clemenceau,  who  was  at 
the  time  Prime  Minister  and  Minister  of  the  In- 
terior, in  his  reply  to  the  interpellators,  justified  the 
arrest  on  the  ground  that  Metivier  had  been  the 
chief  author  of  the  troubles,  denounced  him  in 
vigorous  language  and  indignantly  denied  that  the 
arrest  of  such  a  man  could  be  regarded  as  an  affront 
to  the  working  classes.  Two  years  later  it  was  dis- 
covered that  Metivier  was  an  agent  provocateur 
employed  by  the  police  at  a  regular  salary  with  the 
knowledge  and  approval  of  M.  Clemenceau  himself, 
and  that  he  had  been  paid  double  salary  while 
serving  the  terms  of  imprisonment  necessary  to 
prevent  any  suspicion  on  the  part  of  the  workmen 
of  his  real  character.  The  whole  of  the  facts  were 
published  in  the  Press  and  M.  Clemenceau  could 
not  deny  them.  This  is,  unfortunately,  merely  a 
typical  example  of  an  habitual  practice  which  had 
gone  on  long  before  that  time  and  which  still  con- 
tinues. It  was  remarkable  only  from  the  fact  that 
for  once  it  was  possible  to  prove  the  direct  responsi- 
bility of  the  Minister  of  the  Interior.  But  the 
Minister  of  the  Interior  is  always  either  directly 
or  indirectly  responsible,  for  he  could  stop  the  em- 
ployment of  agents  provocateurs  by  a  stroke  of  the 
pen.  Not  one  Minister  of  the  Interior  in  the  his- 
tory of  the  Third  Republic  has  done  so. 

An  exhaustive  account  of  the  methods  and  prac- 
tices of  the  Political  Police  would  fill  a  whole 
volume,  and  only  a  few  more  examples  of  them  can 


THE  ADMINISTRATIVE  SYSTEM  89 

be  mentioned.  Everybody  of  any  importance,  par- 
ticularly of  any  political  importance,  has  his  dossier 
at  the  Ministry  of  the  Interior,  in  which  anything 
supposed  to  be  to  his  discredit  is  noted.  The 
dossiers  are  compiled  from  any  sort  of  gossip  or 
tittle-tattle  that  can  be  collected  from  anybody, 
and  no  attempt  is  made  to  verify  the  information 
or  to  test  the  credibility  of  the  informants,  who  are 
for  the  most  part  police  spies — the  most  untrust- 
worthy of  all  witnesses.  In  Paris  some  of  the  in- 
formation is  obtained  from  the  concierges,  many  of 
whom  are  in  touch  with  the  police  and  are  employed 
to  spy  on  the  tenants  of  the  houses  where  they  are 
employed,  and  even  sometimes  to  intercept  their 
correspondence.  Rightly  or  wrongly,  the  concierge 
is  popularly  regarded  as  a  person  addicted  to  gossip 
and  given  to  extreme  credulity ;  one  can  hardly  say 
anything  worse  of  a  man  than  that  he  has  "un 
mentalite  de  concierge."  In  any  case,  it  is  so  gene- 
rally recognised  that  the  information  obtained  by 
the  police  about  individuals  is  not  worth  serious 
consideration  that  "rapport  de  police  "  is  a  slang 
expression  for  any  kind  of  obviously  untrue  report 
about  a  person.  Indeed,  one  of  the  worst  effects  of 
the  French  police  system  is  that  it  utterly  discredits 
the  police,  in  whom  the  public  has  as  little  con- 
fidence as  it  has  in  the  administration  of  justice,  for 
reasons  which  we  shall  consider  later.  The  police 
are  intensely  unpopular  in  France,  even  with  honest 
people,  and  in  many  cases  people  will  suffer  an  in- 
justice or  a  wrong  rather  than  resort  to  them,  such 
is  the  suspicion  with  which  they  are  regarded.  A 
French  crowd  is  rarely  willing  to  give  assistance 
even  to  an  ordinary  policeman  in  the  exercise  of 
his  duty.  Indeed,  the  French  people  as  a  whole 
regard  the  police  as  their  enemies.  This  is  the 
nemesis  of  an  arbitrary  system  which  takes  no 


90  MY  SECOND   COUNTRY 

account  of  justice  and  has  no  regard  for  individual 
rights.1 

It  may  perhaps  be  useful  to  mention  two  ex- 
amples of  the  untrustworthiness  of  police  dossiers 
within  my  own  knowledge  :  I  could  mention  several 
others.  A  friend  of  mine  on  becoming  a  Minister 
for  the  first  time  was  asked  by  the  Minister  of  the 
Interior  whether  he  would  like  to  see  his  dossier. 
He  said  that  he  would,  and  it  was  shown  to  him. 
Therein  he  read  that  he  was  in  close  relations  with 
a  certain  trade  union  leader  of  revolutionary 
opinions,  whom  he  was  in  the  habit  of  meeting  two 
or  three  times  a  week.  Now  the  Minister  in  ques- 
tion, as  he  told  me,  had  some  acquaintances  among 
the  trade  union  leaders,  but  the  particular  one  men- 
tioned he  had  never  spoken  to  in  his  life  and  did  nox 
even  know  by  sight.  The  other  example  concerns 
myself.  It  was,  and  probably  still  is,  recorded  in 
my  dossier  that  in  1911  I  was  in  close  relations  with 
Mannesmann  Brothers,  the  German  firm  in  Morocco 
which  had  difficulties  with  the  French  Government. 
In  fact,  I  have  never  in  my  life  had  the  smallest 
connection  of  any  kind  with  the  firm  in  question, 
which  I  know  only  by  name,  like  everyone  else.  I 
have  since  discovered  the  possible  explanation  of 
this  fiction  :  a  paper  with  which  I  was  connected 
received  in  1911  occasional  contributions  from  an 
Englishman  in  Morocco,  whose  name  bore  no  resem- 
blance to  mine,  but  who  may,  for  all  I  know,  have 
had  business  or  other  relations  with  Mannesman^ 
Brothers.  Perhaps  I  may  add  another  personal 

1  The  methods  of  what  Georges  Courteline  has  called  "  ces 
deux  vieilles  ennemies  acharne^s  des  gens  de  bien  :  Padministra- 
tion  et  la  loi  '*  have  often  provoked  the  irony  of  French  authors, 
and  French  literature  is  full  of  stories  exposing  their  injustice. 
The  masterpiece  of  this  kind  is  Anatole  France's  "  Crainquebille"; 
a  lighter  example  is  Courteline's  short  story,  "  Un  Monsieur  a 
trouv6  une  montre,"  in  which  occurs  the  phrase  just  quoted. 


THE  ADMINISTRATIVE  SYSTEM  91 

experience  which,  although  it  does  not  relate  to 
the  matter  of  dossiers,  is  an  amusing  example  of 
the  senseless  way  in  which  the  French  police  wastes 
its  time.  In  1912  a  committee  was  formed  in  Paris 
to  take  up  the  case  of  a  soldier  called  Rousset,  who 
had  been  convicted  of  murder  in  Africa  in  circum- 
stances which  unpleasantly  recalled  the  Dreyfus 
case,  although  in  the  case  of  Rousset  the  motive 
was  personal,  not  political,  rancour.  The  com- 
mittee succeeded  in  proving  conclusively  that 
Rousset  was  innocent  and  the  conviction  was  ulti- 
mately quashed.  The  president  of  the  committee 
was  M.  Anatole  France,  and  it  was  composed  of 
men  of  the  highest  reputation  in  politics,  literature, 
religion  and  other  callings,  with  very  different 
opinions  on  all  matters.  Being  a  foreigner,  I  did 
not,  of  course,  join  the  committee,  but  I  was  asked 
to  allow  it  to  meet  at  my  flat,  which  happened  to  be 
in  a  central  situation  convenient  for  all  the  mem- 
bers. I  did  so,  and  the  meetings  were  held  from 
time  to  time  at  about  8.30  p.m.,  and  lasted  perhaps 
until  about  10  o'clock.  Immediately  after  the  first 
meeting  the  concierge  of  the  house  in  which  I  lived 
was  visited  by  the  police,  who  put  him  through  a 
severe  cross-examination  and  requested  him  to 
supply  them  with  information  about  all  the  people 
that  came  to  my  flat  and  anything  else  that  he 
could  discover.  Detectives  were  told  off  to  watch 
the  house  day  and  night,  and  the  unfortunate  con- 
cierge's life  was  made  a  burden  to  him  by  the  fre- 
quent visits  of  the  police.  Finally,  I  received  a 
letter  from  my  landlord  saying  that  he  had  been 
informed  by  the  police  that  I  was  holding  in  my 
flat  "  conciliabules  nocturnes "  of  dangerous  and 
revolutionary  persons,  who  remained  there  until  the 
small  hours  of  the  morning,  and  requesting  me  to 
desist  from  such  practices.  Instead  of  desisting,  I 


92  MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

at  once  had  the  matter  reported  to  M.  Steeg,  who 
was  then  Minister  of  the  Interior,  and  he  ordered 
the  police  to  desist  from  their  kind  attentions.  Let 
it  not  be  thought  that  I  was  the  object  of  those 
attentions  merely  because  I  was  a  foreigner;  this 
is  the  sort  of  thing  to  which  any  French  citizen  may 
be  and  often  is  subjected.  A  Frenchman's  house 
is  not  his  castle  so  far  as  the  State  and  the  police 
are  concerned.  The  police  have  the  power  to  make 
domiciliary  visits  on  the  slightest  excuse  to  the 
homes  of  persons  not  charged  with  any  offence 
against  the  law  and  to  overhaul  all  their  private 
papers.  Even  correspondence  is  not  sacred,  for  the 
Cabinet  Noir  is  a  permanent  institution,  and  letters 
are  frequently  intercepted  in  the  post  and  opened 
secretly.  All  these  methods  have,  of  course,  been 
aggravated  during  the  war  by  martial  law,  but  it 
is  not  my  intention  here  to  speak  of  what  happened 
during  the  war ;  the  system  that  I  have  described  is 
the  normal  one  which  functions  in  time  of  peace. 
It  is  condemned  by  the  vast  majority  of  the  French 
people,  but  it  does  not  seem  to  occur  to  them  that 
they  could  change  it  if  they  would  only  take  the 
trouble.  In  France  more  than  anywhere,  every- 
body's business  is  nobody's  business. 

Not  only  has  the  French  police  imitated  the 
methods  of  the  Russian,  but  it  has  also,  since  the 
Russian  Alliance,  which  had  as  disastrous  an  in- 
fluence on  the  internal  affairs  as  on  the  foreign 
policy  of  France,  closely  co-operated  with  the 
Russian  Secret  Police.  There  have  been  times 
when  the  Russian  Secret  Police  was  given  a  free 
hand  in  France  in  regard  to  Russian  subjects,  even 
if  they  happened  to  be  Poles  or  Finns.  When  M. 
Ribot  was  Prime  Minister  in  the  'nineties,  in  the 
early  days  of  the  Alliance,  Parisian  concierges  were 
used  by  the  Russian  police,  with  the  consent  of  the 


THE  ADMINISTRATIVE  SYSTEM  93 

French  authorities,  to  intercept  correspondence  of 
tenants.  Large  numbers  of  Russian  and  Polish 
refugees,  who  had  fled  from  the  tyranny  of  the 
Tsardom  to  the  country  of  the  Revolution,  have 
been  expelled  from  France  for  no  reason  at  all  ex- 
cept that  the  Russian  Embassy  or  the  Russian 
Secret  Police  desired  their  expulsion.1  One  of  these 
expulsions — that  of  Trotsky — has  cost  France  dear. 
When  Trotsky  was  expelled  in  August  1916,  at  the 
request  of  M.  Isvolsky,  the  Russian  Ambassador, 
he  said  to  the  agents  who  came  to  conduct  him  to 
the  frontier  :  "  Tell  your  Minister  of  Foreign  Affairs 
that  the  time  is  not  far  distant  when  I  will  meet 
him  as  an  equal."  He  has  kept  his  word,  and  it 
was  no  doubt  in  order  that  he  might  keep  it  that 
he  became  Commissioner  for  Foreign  Affairs  in  the 
first  Bolshevik  Administration.  There  can  also  be 
no  doubt  that  Trotsky's  natural  though  not  very 
generous  personal  rancour  for  the  treatment  that  he 
had  received  had  a  considerable  influence  on  his 
policy,  which  might  otherwise  not  have  been  anti- 
French.  It  must  be  said  as  some  excuse  for  his 
bitterness  that  the  French  police  pursued  him  after 
his  expulsion  with  vindictive  malice,  and  that  he 
and  his  family  were  for  a  time  almost  reduced  to 
starvation.  Trotsky,  who  had  been  earning  a  bare 
subsistence  by  the  publication  of  a  Russian  paper 
in  France,  was  penniless  at  the  time  of  his  expul- 
sion. He  first  went  to  Switzerland,  but  was  ex- 
pelled from  that  country  at  the  instigation  of  the 
French  Government ;  he  then  took  refuge  in  Spain, 
where  the  representations  of  the  French  police 
caused  him  to  be  arrested  and  imprisoned;  the 
Spanish  Socialists  obtained  his  release,  and  he  went 

1  The  Minister  of  the  Interior  has  absolute  power  to  expel 
any  foreigner  from  France  at  any  time  without  giving  any 
reason. 


94  MY  SECOND  COUNTRY 

to  the  United  States,  where  he  remained  until  the 
Russian  Revolution.  It  was  a  certain  poetic  justice 
that  enabled  this  man  within  little  more  than  a  year 
of  his  expulsion  to  speak  in  the  name  of  Russia  to 
the  Government  that  had  tracked  and  persecuted 
him. 

Enough  has  been  said  to  show  that  nothing  could 
be  less  democratic  than  the  French  administration. 
The  political  Constitution  and  the  legislature  seem 
at  first  sight  more  democratic,  and  in  some  respects 
they  are,  but  they  are  very  far  from  realising  the 
conditions  of  true  democracy.  This  is  not  surpris- 
ing, since  the  French  Constitution  was  the  work  of 
Monarchists  who  did  not  want  a  Republic  and 
whose  intention  it  was  to  frame  a  Constitution 
which  could  easily  be  adapted  to  a  monarchical 
regime.  Indeed,  the  French  Constitution  could  be 
so  adapted  by  the  mere  transference  to  the 
Monarch  of  the  rights  and  powers  of  the  President 
of  the  Republic,  which  are  considerably  greater 
than  those  of  the  King  of  England.  The  Royalists 
had  a  large  majority  in  the  National  Assembly 
elected  in  1871,  which,  in  spite  of  the  opposition  of 
Gambetta  and  the  Republicans,  made  peace  with 
Germany  and  consented  to  the  cession  of  Alsace- 
Lorraine.  No  other  course  was  possible  in  the  cir- 
cumstances, and  it  would  have  been  madness  to 
continue  a  hopeless  struggle ;  Gambetta  had  with 
the  best  intentions  done  great  harm  to  his  country 
by  continuing  it  so  long,  for  France  was  offered, 
after  the  battle  of  Sedan  and  the  fall  of  the  Second 
Empire,  better  terms  of  peace  than  she  afterwards 
obtained.  It  was  because  the  peasants,  with  their 
usual  good  sense,  recognised  that  fact  that  they 
returned  a  Royalist  majority  to  the  National  Assem- 
bly. The  National  Assembly,  then,  had  no  inten- 
tion of  setting  up  a  Republic ;  but  for  the 


THE  POLITICAL  SYSTEM          &5 

obstinate  refusal  of  the  Comte  de  Chambord  to 
abandon  the  Lilies  of  France  for  the  Tricolour,  that 
pious  and  stupid  prince  would  certainly  have  be- 
come King  of  France,  although  he  probably  would 
not  have  remained  long  on  the  throne.  When  cir- 
cumstances made  a  Republic  inevitable,  the 
National  Assembly  acquiesced  with  great  reluc- 
tance ;  it  was  by  a  majority  of  one  that  it  consented 
to  confer  on  Thiers  the  title  of  "  Chief  of  the  Execu- 
tive of  the  French  Republic."  In  spite  of  this 
reluctant  acquiescence,  the  majority  of  the  Assem- 
bly still  hoped  to  restore  the  Monarchy  sooner  or 
later,  and,  when  the  Constitution  was  framed  in 
1875,  it  was,  as  I  have  said,  framed  in  that  hope 
and  with  the  express  purpose  of  making  a  restora- 
tion easy.  Hence  it  is  that  France  has  still  a 
Royalist  Constitution,  for  the  amendments  made  in 
it  since  have  not  destroyed  its  essential  monarchist 
character. 

The  French  Constitution  was  modelled  as  far  as 
possible  on  the  British,  and  differs  profoundly  from 
the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  of  America. 
The  American  President  is  his  own  Prime  Minister ; 
he  forms  the  Cabinet  as  he  pleases,  and  the  Execu- 
tive is  not  responsible  to  Congress,  which  cannot 
dismiss  it;  the  Cabinet  remains  in  office,  even 
though  there  be  a  majority  against  it  in  both 
Houses.  The  American  system  of  government,  in 
fact,  is  not  parliamentary  government  at  all,  since 
Parliament  has  no  effective  control  over  the  Execu- 
tive except  in  certain  specified  regards — for  ex- 
ample, a  treaty  requires  the  ratification  of  the 
Senate.  It  is  really  an  elective  autocracy  lasting 
in  each  case  for  four  years  and  is  very  far  from 
being  democratic,  for  democracy  in  the  true  sense 
of  the  term  implies  the  constant  control  of  the 
Executive;  that  control  may  be  exercised  in 


96  MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

different  ways,  but  it  must  exist.  In  America  it 
does  not  exist :  the  President  of  the  United  States 
has  more  personal  power  than  the  German  Emperor 
ever  had  and  is  now  the  only  autocrat  left  in  the 
civilised  world.  The  President  of  the  French  Re- 
public, on  the  other  hand,  is  a  constitutional 
monarch  elected  for  seven  years.  The  Constitution 
gives  him  the  right  to  appoint  the  Ministers,  but  in 
fact  he  appoints  only  the  Prime  Minister,  who 
chooses  his  own  colleagues.  No  doubt  the  Presi- 
dent may,  and  sometimes  does,  object  to  a  particu- 
lar choice,  but  if  the  Prime  Minister  stands  firm  he 
is  almost  sure  to  have  his  own  way.  For  the  Con- 
stitution implies  that  a  Ministry  must  have  a  majo- 
rity in  Parliament  and  must  resign  if  it  has  not; 
and  if  the  Prime  Minister  be  really  the  choice  of 
Parliament  he  can  always  successfully  resist  the 
President  of  the  Republic.  Only  one  President  in 
the  history  of  the  Third  Republic — Marshal 
MacMahon- — has  attempted  to  overrule  Parliament 
by  forcing  on  it  a  Prime  Minister  that  it  did  not 
want;  the  country  condemned  the  attempt  at  a 
general  election,  and  Marshal  MacMahon  himself 
eventually  had  to  resign.  When  in  May  1914  M. 
Poincare  entrusted  M.  Ribot  with  the  formation  of 
a  Cabinet,  although  he  was  obviously  not  accept- 
able to  the  majority  of  the  Chamber,  the  new  Minis- 
try was  defeated  in  the  Chamber  on  its  first  appear- 
ance before  it,  and  of  course  at  once  resigned.  The 
French  system  of  government  is  therefore  a  true 
parliamentary  system  like  the  British,  which  is  not 
to  say  that  it  is  really  democratic. 

The  Constitution  confers  important  powers  on 
the  President  of  the  Republic,  but  they  are  not 
quite  personal  like  those  of  the  President  of  the 
United  States,  for  no  act  of  the  French  President 
is  valid  unless  it  is  countersigned  by  a  Minister. 


THE  POLITICAL  SYSTEM          97 

Nevertheless,  these  powers  are  excessive  and  one 
of  them  in  particular  is  extremely  dangerous. 
The  President  of  the  Republic  has  the  disposal 
of  the  French  military  and  naval  forces  and 
has  the  power  to  sign  treaties,  which  he  is  not 
bound  to  make  known  to  Parliament  until  he  thinks 
it  opportune  to  do  so.  It  is  this  last  power  that  is 
so  dangerous.  In  order  to  be  valid  and  binding  on 
the  French  people,  treaties,  with  certain  exceptions, 
have  only  to  be  signed  by  the  President  of  the 
Republic  and  a  single  Minister.1  The  President 
and  the  Prime  Minister  or  the  Minister  of  Foreign 
Affairs  can  therefore  make  a  secret  treaty, 
not  merely  without  consulting  Parliament,  but 
even  without  consulting  the  Cabinet;  two 
men  have  the  power  to  commit  the  French 
people  without  their  knowledge  or  consent  to 
obligations  which  may  involve  the  risk  of  their 
lives  and  property  and  the  gravest  danger  to  the 
country.  Nor  is  this  merely  an  hypothesis;  it  has 
often  occurred.  M.  Poincare  and  M.  Briand  made 
the  Agreement  of  February  1917  with  the  Russian 
Government  without  consulting  the  Cabinet.  M. 
Albert  Thomas,  who  was  a  member  of  M.  Briand 's 
Cabinet,  knew  nothing  about  the  Agreement  until 
the  following  June,  when,  on  his  return  from 
Russia,  he  was  informed  of  it  by  M.  Ribot,  who  had 
then  succeeded  M.  Briand  as  Prime  Minister.  But 
the  worst  example  of  all  is  that  of  the  Franco- 
Russian  Alliance.  The  fact  of  the  Alliance  was 
formally  proclaimed  in  1897  and  it  had  been  con- 
cluded five  or  six  years  earlier.  Yet  in  1914,  when 
the  Alliance,  as  Jaures  had  foreseen  more  than 

1  The  exceptions  are  peace  treaties,  commercial  treaties,  and 
treaties  that  involve  public  expenditure  or  are  concerned  with 
the  status  or  property  of  French  citizens  abroad,  all  of  which 
have  to  be  ratified  by  Parliament.  No  territory  can  be  ceded, 
annexed,  or  exchanged  without  the  sanction  of  a  special  law. 

H 


98  MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

a  quarter  of  a  century  before,  dragged  France 
into  war,1  the  French  people,  and  even  pro- 
minent French  politicians,  were  still  totally 
ignorant  of  its  conditions  and  of  the  provi- 
sions of  the  treaties  which  constituted  it.  They  did 
not  know  what  were  the  obligations  to  which  they 
had  been  committed — whether,  for  instance,  France 
was  compelled  by  the  treaties  to  go  to  the  aid  of 
Russia  if  the  latter  were  attacked  by  Germany 
alone,  or  only  if  she  were  attacked  by  two  Powers. 
Supposing  that  the  latter  hypothesis  were  the  true 
one,  France  could  have  undertaken  to  remain 
neutral  when  Germany  asked  her  to  do  so  after  the 
German  declaration  of  war  on  Russia  on 
August  1,  1914.  Whether  it  would  or  would 
not  have  been  wise  for  France  to  remain 
neutral  is  a  question  into  which  I  do  not 
now  propose  to  enter;  in  any  case,  the  French 
people,  and  the  French  people  alone,  had  the  right 
to  make  the  choice  and  should  have  been  given 
the  opportunity  of  making  it.  The  French  people 
had,  in  fact,  no  voice  in  the  matter,  and  could  not, 
even  had  it  been  consulted,  have  made  a  choice 
without  knowing  what  its  obligations  to  Russia 
were.  The  provisions  of  the  French  Constitution  in 
this  regard  are  the  negation  of  democracy,  for  they 
deprive  the  people,  its  representatives,  and  even 
the  Cabinet,  of  any  effective  control  over  foreign 
policy.  In  this  regard  the  French  Republic  is  not 
one  whit  more  democratic  than  was  the  German 
Empire. 

1  In  an  article  contributed  to  the  Deptche  de  Toulouse  on 
February  26,  1887,  Jaures,  who  at  that  time  was  not  yet  a 
Socialist,  strongly  opposed  the  Russian  Alliance,  which  was  then 
being  discussed,  on  the  ground  that  the  next  great  war  would 
be  caused  by  a  quarrel  between  Austria  and  Russia  about  the 
Balkans,  and  that  an  alliance  with  Russia  would  drag  France 
into  it.  (See  preface  of  "  Jean  Jaures,"  by  Charles  Rappoport, 
2nd  edition.) 


THE  POLITICAL  SYSTEM          99 

The  Constitution  forbids  a  declaration  of  war 
without  the  consent  of  Parliament,  but  this  pro- 
vision is  of  little  practical  use,  for  a  Government 
can  always  take  the  preliminary  steps  for  war  and 
put  Parliament  in  face  of  a  fait  accompli.  The 
case  did  not  arise  in  August  1914,  since  Germany 
declared  war  on  France ;  but  the  Government  took 
care  not  to  summon  Parliament,  which  was  in  vaca- 
tion at  the  time,  until  war  had  been  declared.  In  a 
really  democratic  country  Parliament  would  be 
summoned  the  moment  there  seemed  to  be  any 
danger  of  war  and  would  be  consulted  about  every 
step  in  the  negotiations.  Had  all  the  negotiations 
that  preceded  the  war  been  conducted  publicly  in 
the  face  of  the  world,  it  is  probable  that  there 
would  have  been  no  war,  for  all  the  peoples  would 
then  have  understood  what  their  diplomatists  were 
up  to.  In  defiance  of  the  Constitution,  the  French 
Government  declared  war  on  Austria  and  on  Turkey 
without  consulting  Parliament,  which  has  com- 
pletely acquiesced  in  the  infringement  of  its  rights, 
and  those  of  the  French  people;  the  question  has 
never  been  raised  in  the  Senate  or  Chamber.  Since 
the  Armistice  the  French  Government  has  uncon- 
stitutionally conducted  military  operations  against 
the  Russian  Soviet  Government  without  declaring 
war. 

The  French  Legislature  consists  of  two  Houses, 
the  Chamber  of  Deputies,  elected  by  manhood 
suffrage,  and  the  Senate,  chosen  by  an  electorate 
composed  of  the  Deputies,  the  members  of  the 
conseils-gen£raux  and  conseils  d'arrondissement, 
and  delegates  from  the  Municipal  Councils.1 

1  For  a  senatorial  election  the  electoral  college  assembles  at  the 
chief  town  of  the  department.  The  first  poll  is  taken  from 
8  a.m.  to  noon  ;  if  no  candidate  obtains  a  clear  majority  of  all 
the  votes  cast,  another  poll  is  taken  from  2  to  5  p.m.,  and  if 
that  also  is  without  result,  there  is  a  third  from  7  to  10  p.m., 

H   2 


100         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

There  are  300  senators ;  100  are  elected  every  three 
years  and  hold  office  for  nine  years;  nobody  is 
eligible  for  election  to  the  Senate  until  he  is  at  least 
forty  years  old.  By  the  original  Constitution 
seventy-five  Senators  were  elected  for  life  by  the 
Senate  itself  (in  the  first  instance  by  the  National 
Assembly),  but  this  was  altered  in  1887.  The 
number  of  Senators  for  each  department  is  not  pro- 
portionate to  its  population,  and  the  municipal 
councils  of  the  large  towns  are  very  much  under- 
represented  in  the  electoral  colleges.1  The  result 

at  which  the  candidate  obtaining  the  highest  number  of  votes  is 
elected.  But  no  candidate  can  be  elected  unless  he  obtains  the 
votes  of  at  least  one -fourth  of  the  electors  on  the  register.  In 
case  of  equality  of  votes  between  two  candidates,  the  elder  is 
elected.  Even  if  there  be  only  one  candidate  at  an  election,  a 
poll  must  be  taken  and  at  least  one -fourth  of  the  electors  must 
record  their  votes  for  the  candidate  in  order  to  secure  his  election. 
The  ballot  at  senatorial  elections,  as  at  all  French  elections, 
is  secret ;  the  safeguards  of  secrecy  are  now  very  rigorous  and 
effective. 

1  Seven  colonial  departments  and  the  Territory  of  Belfort  have 
one  senator  each,  ten  departments  have  two  each,  fifty-two  three, 
twelve  four,  and  ten  five  each  ;  the  Nord  has  eight  senators  and 
the  Seine  ten.  The  population  of  the  Seine  (1911)  is  4,154,042. 
rather  more  than  one-tenth  of  the  whole  population  of  France,  so 
that  the  department  should  have  at  least  thirty  senators  ;  in 
fact  it  has  half  the  representation  of  the  ten  departments  with 
two  senators  each,  whose  aggregate  population  is  only  1,953,760. 
The  Paris  municipal  council  has  thirty  delegates  at  a  Senatorial 
election,  the  councils  of  other  towns  with  more  than  60,000  in- 
habitants have  twenty-four,  and  the  number  varies  from  one 
to  twenty  -one  in  the  other  cases  ;  the  councils  of  communes  with 
less  than  500  inhabitants  have  one  delegate,  those  of  communes 
with  more  than  500  but  not  more  than  1,500  inhabitants  have 
two,  and  so  on.  In  1911  more  than  half  the  communes  of 
France  (19,270  out  of  36,241)  had  less  than  500  inhabitants  ;  these 
communes,  with  an  aggregate  population  of  about  five  millions, 
have  19,270  votes  for  the  Senate,  whereas  Paris,  with  a  popula- 
tion of  nearly  throe  millions,  has  only  thirty.  A  concrete  example 
of  the  working  of  the  system  in  a  department  will  show  its 
injustice.  The  department  of  the  Rh6ne  has  twenty-nine 
cantons,  of  which  eight  are  in  Lyons,  and  269  communes.  The 
municipal  council  of  Lyons,  which  has  a  population  of  523,796, 
has  twenty-four  delegates  at  a  senatorial  election ;  the  councils 


THE  POLITICAL  SYSTEM          10i 

is  that  the  rural  districts  enormously  preponderate 
in  the  election  of  the  Senate,  which  is  always  a 
conservative  body,  especially  in  regard  to  social 
and  labour  questions ;  it  is  also  always  anti-clerical 
and  the  majority  of  its  members  are  always  Radi- 
cals. But  as  Sir  Charles  Dilke  said  to  M.  Emile 
Vandervelde,  speaking  of  an  English  Tory  politi- 
cian who  was  particularly  hostile  to  all  reform, 
"  He  is  as  conservative  as  a  French  Radical."  At 
the  general  election  of  1914,  101  Socialists  were 
elected  to  the  Chamber  of  Deputies,  but  there  is 
not  and  there  has  never  been  a  single  Socialist  in 
the  Senate ;  that  fact  alone  shows  that  the  Senate 
does  not  represent  the  country. 

The  Chamber  of  Deputies  is  elected  every  four 
years.  Until  1919  the  system  was  that  of  single- 
member  constituencies  (scrutin  d'arrondissement), 
except  for  a  short  interval  during  which  there  was 
scrutin  de  liste — that  is  to  say,  the  constituency 
was  the  department,  and  the  elector  had  as  many 
votes  as  there  were  deputies  to  be  elected,  but 
could  not  give  more  than  one  vote  to  any  candidate. 
The  latter  system,  which  meant  that  a  party  having 
a  bare  majority  could  elect  all  the  deputies  of  a 
department,  was  in  force  at  only  one  general  elec- 
tion— that  of  1886 — and  its  results  were  so  unsatis- 
factory that  in  1889  the  scrutin  d'arrondissement 
was  restored.  The  scrutin  de  liste  might,  indeed, 
easily  produce  a  Parliament  in  which  the  majority 
represented  a  minority  of  the  voters.  In  July 
1919,  however,  the  scrutin  de  liste  was  again 

of  the  other  268  communes,  whose  aggregate  population  is 
391,785,  have  674  delegates.  Since  every  canton,  whatever  its 
population,  has  one  representative  on  the  conseil-g6neral,  Lyons 
returns  only  eight  of  the  twenty-nine  members  of  the  conseil- 
general  of  the  Rh6ne  (all  of  whom  have  votes  for  the  Senate), 
and  is  also  swamped  there.  It  will  be  seen  that  the  system  on 
which  the  Senate  is  elected  is  a  caricature  of  representation. 


102         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

introduced,  but  this  time  with  a  modification  which 
reduced  its  dangers,  although  the  hybrid  system 
adopted — a  mixture  of  scrutin  de  liste  and  propor- 
tional representation — is  not  likely  to  prove  very 
satisfactory,  and  will  probably  result  in  a  repre- 
sentation less  proportional  than  that  obtained  by 
the  old  system  of  single-member  constituencies 
with  a  second  ballot.  Indeed  at  the  general  elec- 
tion of  1914  the  Socialists  had  exactly  the  number 
of  Deputies  to  which  their  total  poll  at  the  first 
ballot  would  have  entitled  them  on  an  absolutely 
exact  proportional  system,  such  as  is,  of  course, 
impossible  in  practice,  and  the  representation  of  the 
other  parties  was  fairly  proportional  to  their  respec- 
tive voting  strengths.  The  system  adopted  in  July 
1919,  was  a  compromise  between  the  Proportionai- 
ists  and  the  advocates  of  single-member  constitu- 
encies, who,  when  they  recognised  that  the  old 
system  was  doomed,  preferred  the  scrutin  de  liste 
pure  and  simple  to  any  proportional  system,  on 
the  absurd  ground  that  the  <f  representation  of 
minorities "  is  undemocratic.  They  seemed  to 
forget  that  with  any  system  minorities  are  repre- 
sented in  the  country  as  a  whole,  as  they  ought  to 
be,  and  that  the  so-called  "  majoritaire  "  system 
of  scrutin  de  liste  might  well  result  in  giving  over- 
representation  to  minorities. 

The  new  system  is  as  illogical  as  such  compro- 
mises always  are  and  may  result  in  unpleasant  sur- 
prises. The  department  once  more  becomes  the 
constituency,  as  a  rule,  but  the  Seine  is  divided  into 
four  constituencies  (three  in  Paris  and  one  com- 
posed of  its  suburbs),  and  seven  other  depart- 
ments into  two.  Each  department  is  eventually 
to  have  one  deputy  for  every  75,000  inhabit- 
ants of  French  nationality  or  fraction  of  75,000 
exceeding  37,500.  If  this  provision  were  strictly 


THE  POLITICAL  SYSTEM          103 

applied,  a  department  would  not  be  entitled 
to  two  Deputies  unless  it  had  more  than 
112,500  French  inhabitants,  and  would  have 
three  Deputies  only  if  its  French  population  ex- 
ceeded 187,500 ;  but  either  scrutin  dt  liste  or  pro- 
portional representation  necessitates  at  least  three 
Deputies  for  every  constituency.  The  proper  solu- 
tion would  have  been  to  group  small  departments, 
as  was  indeed  proposed  during  the  discussion  of  the 
law ;  but  it  was  decided  that  no  department,  what- 
ever its  population,  should  have  less  than  three 
Deputies.  The  over-representation  of  the  rural 
districts,  which  was  one  of  the  greatest  faults  of 
the  old  system,  will  therefore  be  continued,  but 
only  to  a  small  extent.1  The  law  further  provided 
that  all  the  departments  should  retain  their  old 
representation  until  a  new  census  had  been  taken, 
with  the  result  that  there  will  be  considerable  in- 
equalities in  the  representation  of  the  departments 
at  the  general  election  of  1919. 2  Each  elector  has 

1  In  1911  there  were  only  two  departments  with  a  population 
not  exceeding  112,500  and  two  with  a  population  exceeding  that 
figure    but   not   exceeding    187,500,    so  that  there  will  be  only 
four  departments  over-represented  when  the  new  law  is  fully 
applied,  unless,  as  is  possible,  the  next  census  should  show  that 
the  number  of  departments  with  not  more  than  187,500  in- 
habitants has  increased. 

2  At  present  every  department  has  at  least  one  deputy  for 
each  of  its  arrondissements,  however  small  their  population  may 
be.     For  example,  Basses-Alpes,  with  a  population  of  107,231, 
and  Hautes-Alpes,  with  a  population  of  105,083,  have  respec- 
tively  five    and   three    deputies.     Aube,   whose   population   is 
240,755,  has  six  deputies,  because  one  of  its  five  arrondissements 
having  more  than  100,000  inhabitants  is  entitled  to  two,  although 
each  of  the  other  four  arrondissements  has  a  population  of  less 
than  40,000,  and  one  of  them  has  only  26,684  inhabitants.    Under 
the  new  law  Aube  will  eventually  be  entitled  to  only  three 
deputies,  unless  its  population  should  have  increased,  as  is  im- 
probable.    These  are  but  examples  of  the  general  over-repre- 
sentation of  the  rural  departments,  which  the  new  law  will  correct 
to   a  very  great  extent.     The  seventeen  departments  with  a 


104         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

as  many  votes  as  there  are  Deputies  to  be  elected, 
but  can  give  only  one  vote  to  each  candidate.  The 
candidates  are  presented  in  lists,  which  may  include 
as  many  names  as  there  are  Deputies  to  be  elected 
or  any  smaller  number  down  to  one.  The  elector 
can  either  vote  for  a  list  as  a  whole  or  make  a  list 
of  his  own  selection  from  the  various  candidates 
nominated.  Any  candidate  that  obtains  at  the 
poll  a  clear  majority  of  all  the  voters  is  declared 
elected ;  if,  therefore,  the  whole  list  of  a  particular 
party  is  supported  by  more  than  half  the  voters, 
that  party  returns  the  whole  of  the  Deputies  for 
the  constituency — the  Nord,  which  is  undivided, 
has  twenty-three.  If  no  candidate  obtains  a 
clear  majority,  or  if  the  number  of  candidates 
that  obtain  it  is  less  than  the  number  of 
Deputies  to  be  elected,  the  seats,  or  the  remnant 
of  them,  are  distributed  among  the  various  lists  on 
the  Belgian  system  of  proportional  representation. 
The  "electoral  quotient"  is  obtained  by  dividing 
the  total  number  of  voters  by  the  number  of  Depu- 
ties to  be  elected,  and  the  average  of  each  list  is 
arrived  at  by  dividing  the  aggregate  number  of 
votes  obtained  by  the  list  by  the  number  of  candi- 
dates on  it.  The  number  of  seats  allotted  to  each 
list  is  the  number  of  times  that  its  average  contains 
the  electoral  quotient.  If  there  still  remain  seats 
to  be  filled,  triey  are  allotted  to  the  lists  having 
the  largest  average.1  On  each  list  the  seats  are 

population  not  exceeding  262,500,  which  will  under  the  new  law 
be  entitled  to  only  three  deputies  each,  have  at  present  an 
aggregate  of  sixty-seven  deputies. 

1  For  example,  take  a  constituency  with  five  deputies  to  elect, 
60,000  voters  and  three  lists,  whose  respective  aggregate  polls 
are  148,000,  80,000,  and  72,000.  One  of  the  candidates  on  List 
A  obtains  33,000  votes  and  is,  therefore,  elected  ;  no  other  can- 
didate has  more  than  30,000  votes.  There  remain  four  seats  to 
be  filled.  The  electoral  quotient  is  12,000,  and  the  averages 
are  :  List  A,  29,600  ;  List  B,  16,000  ;  List  C,  14,400.  Two  of 


THE  POLITICAL  SYSTEM          105 

allotted  to  the  candidates  obtaining  the  largest 
number  of  votes  or,  in  case  of  equality,  to 
the  oldest  of  them.  Unless  more  than  half  the 
electors  go  to  the  poll,  or  if  no  list  has  enough 
votes  to  contain  the  electoral  quotient,  the  election 
is  invalid,  and  another  poll  is  held  a  fortnight  later, 
when,  if  the  same  circumstances  occur,  the  candi- 
dates obtaining  the  largest  number  of  votes  are 
elected.  Vacancies  occurring  during  the  first  three 
and  a  half  years  of  a  Parliament  are  filled  by  bye- 
elections;  during  the  last  six  months  of  a  Parlia- 
ment vacancies  are  not  filled  at  all. 

So  far  as  the  Chamber  of  Deputies  is  concerned 
the  French  legislative  system  is,  therefore,  as  demo- 
cratic as  any  other  parliamentary  system,  but  the 
Constitution  takes  away  with  one  hand  what  it  has 
given  with  the  other.  The  Chamber  elected  by 
popular  suffrage  and  the  Senate  elected  by  re- 
stricted suffrage  have,  with  one  exception,  the  same 
rights  and  powers ;  the  Senate  is  more  than  a  Second 
Chamber,  it  is  a  co-ordinate  Chamber.1  The  one 

the  remaining  seats  will  be  allotted  to  List  A,  which  will  have 
altogether  three  deputies,  and  each  of  the  other  lists  will  have 
one  deputy.  This  resiilt  is  the  same  as  it  would  be  with  a 
system  of  purely  proportional  representation  and  is  sufficiently 
just.  But  supposing  that  two  candidates  on  List  A  obtained 
respectively  32,000  and  31,000  votes,  they  would  both  be  elected 
at  once,  and  there  would  remain  only  three  seats  to  be  filled. 
On  the  proportional  system  List  A  would  be  entitled  to  two  more 
seats,  and  the  other  two  lists  to  one  each,  so  that  there  would 
not  be  enough  seats  to  go  round.  In  these  circumstances  the 
law  provides  that  the  seats  shall  be  attributed  to  the  candidates 
on  whatever  list  having  the  largest  number  of  votes.  If,  as  is 
probable,  all  the  candidates  on  List  A  had  more  votes  than 
any  candidate  on  either  of  the  other  lists,  List  A  would  be 
allotted  all  the  three  seats,  and  would  have  all  the  five  deputies 
although  it  had  not  a  clear  majority  of  the  votes.  It  will  be  seen 
that  the  system  leaves  much  to  chance. 

1  The  Senate  has  also  judicial  functions.  It  sits  as  a  High 
Court  to  try  the  President  of  the  Republic  or  Ministers  for 
'*  crimes  committed  in  the  exercise  of  their  functions,'  and  as 


106         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

exception  is  that  the  Senate  cannot  initiate  financial 
legislation,  a  term  which  includes  any  measure 
involving  special  expenditure,  but  the  Senate  can 
reject  the  Budget  and  amend  it  as  it  pleases.  Such 
a  system  must  inevitably  be  unworkable  and  ex- 
perience has  shown  it  to  be  so.  There  is  no  means 
of  settling  a  difference  between  the  two  Houses 
except  that  of  a  joint  committee,  which  can  only 
make  recommendations  and  usually  results  in  an 
unsatisfactory  compromise.  The  Senate  can  and 
does  obstruct  for  an  indefinite  period  measures  that 
have  been  passed  by  the  Chamber ;  it  does  not,  as 
a  rule,  reject  them,  but  simply  hangs  them  up  for 
years.  That  is  easy,  since  in  the  French  Parlia- 
ment a  Bill  does  not  lapse  at  the  end  of  a  session  if 
it  has  not  been  passed,  or  even  at  the  end  of  a  Par- 
liament; it  is  taken  up  in  each  new  session  or  new 
Parliament  at  the  point  where  it  was  left  by  the 
last.  The  Income  Tax  Bill  was  passed  by  the 
Chamber  in  1909  and  did  not  get  through  the 
Senate  until  1914 ;  it  should  have  come  into  force  in 
January  1915,  but  its  operation  was  postponed 
on  account  of  the  war,  and  it  was  not  completely 
applied  until  1918,  and  then  in  a  diluted  form. 
The  shocking  backwardness  of  France  in  regard  to 
all  social  legislation  is  undoubtedly  due  chiefly  to 

a  Court  of  Justice  to  try  any  person  accused  of  an  **  attempt 
against  the  security  of  the  State."  The  President  of  the  Republic 
cannot  be  tried  by  any  other  tribunal  and  can  be  indicted  only 
by  the  Chamber  of  Deputies.  A  Minister  can  be  indicted  for 
crimes  committed  in  the  exercise  of  his  functions  before  the 
ordinary  tribunals  or  before  the  Senate  ;  in  the  latter  case  he 
can  be  indicted  only  by  the  Chamber  of  Deputies.  The  Govern- 
ment can  send  for  trial  before  the  Senate  any  person  accused 
of  an  attempt  against  the  security  of  the  State,  but  such  persons 
can  also  be  Indicted  before  the  ordinary  tribunals.  M.  Malvy 
was  sent  for  trial  before  the  Senate  by  the  Chamber,  at  his  own 
request,  in  1918,  and  M.  Caillaux,  after  having  first  been  in- 
dictedTbefore^a^military  tribunal,  was  sent  for  trial  before  the 
Senate^by  the  Government. 


THE  POLITICAL  SYSTEM          107 

the  Senate,  which  has  been  a  far  worse  drag  on 
democracy  and  progress  than  the  House  of  Lords— 
probably  with  its  present  restricted  powers  the  least 
pernicious  Second  Chamber  in  the  world.  The 
French  Constitution  stultifies  the  Chamber  of  Depu- 
ties and  renders  it  powerless  by  refusing  it  in 
the  last  resource  the  final  decision,  which  should 
belong  to  the  direct  representatives  of  the  people. 
A  Second  Chamber,  to  be  at  all  tolerable,  should 
have  powers  only  of  postponement  and  revision; 
the  Senate  has  the  power  to  make  legislation  im- 
possible. Even  the  measures  of  social  reform  that 
it  has  at  last  consented  to  pass  have  nearly  all  been 
emasculated.  A  case  in  point  is  the  Old  Age  Pen- 
sions Law,  which  the  Senate  reduced  to  a  mean  and 
niggardly  measure  and  which  has  proved  a  complete 
failure;  it  is,  indeed,  almost  a  dead  letter,  as  the 
great  majority  of  people  refuse  to  pay  the  contri- 
bution required  in  order  to  obtain  a  pension,  and 
the  Government  dares  not  enforce  the  law. 

Thus  the  French  Constitution  requires  drastic 
reforms  in  order  to  make  the  political  system  not 
only  democratic,  but  even  workable,  for  it  can 
never  work  smoothly  until  the  powers  of  the  Senate 
are  limited ;  a  system  of  two  co-ordinate  Houses  of 
Parliament  is  an  absurdity.  But  the  suppression 
of  the  Senate  is  demanded  by  the  parties  of  the 
Left  and  the  existence  of  a  Second  Chamber  is 
indefensible  from  a  democratic  point  of  view;  its 
only  raison  d'etre  is  to  be  a  check  on  democracy. 
If  the  German  Empire  could  do  without  a  Second 
Chamber,  surely  the  French  Republic  can.  On  the 
other  hand,  we  have  to  reckon  with  "the  never- 
ending  audacity  of  elected  persons,"  and  it  would 
not  be  satisfactory  to  give  uncontrolled  power  for 
four  years  to  600  Deputies ;  some  means  must  be 
found  of  keeping  them  under  the  constant  control  of 


108        MY  SECOND   COUNTRY 

the  people,  whether  by  referendum,  the  power  of 
revocation  in  certain  conditions,  or  what  not. 

The  control  of  the  Executive  by  the  legislature 
is  as  necessary  as  the  control  of  the  legislature  itself 
by  the  people.  The  power  of  making  treaties  must 
be  taken  out  of  the  hands  of  the  President  of  the 
Republic,  and,  as  in  the  United  States,  no  treaty 
must  be  valid  until  it  has  been  approved  by  Par- 
liament. French  opinion  of  the  Left  is  unani- 
mously in  favour  of  this  reform,  which  would  make 
secret  treaties  impossible.  But  this  is  not  enough  : 
the  Ministers,  as  in  Switzerland,  must  be  indi- 
vidually elected  by  the  Chamber  of  Deputies,  which 
would,  of  course,  retain  the  power  to  dismiss  them 
when  it  pleased.  Nor  should  the  dismissal  of  a 
single  Minister  entail  the  resignation  of  his  col- 
leagues ;  each  Minister  should  be  individually 
responsible  to  the  Parliament  which  had  elected 
him.1  In  fact,  the  Cabinet  system  should  be  abol- 
ished and  replaced  by  an  Administration  which 
would  be  an  executive  committee  of  Parliament. 
The  theory  of  Ministerial  solidarity  has  in  France,  as 
in  England,  been  mischievous  in  its  results,  for  it 
has  again  and  again  covered  individual  incapacity. 
A  Parliament  may  be  convinced  that  a  particular 
Minister  is  mismanaging  his  department,  but  it  will 
naturally  hesitate  to  censure  him  if  such  a  course 
involves  the  resignation  of  a  Government  with 
which  it  is  satisfied  as  a  whole.  A  case  in  point  was 
that  of  M.  Millerand,  Minister  of  War  in  the  second 
Viviani  Cabinet,  which  came  into  power  at  the  end 

1  M.  Marcel  Sembat  has  proposed  that  no  member  of  Parlia- 
ment shall  be  eligible  for  office  as  a  Minister.  There  is  much  to 
be  said  for  this  proposal,  provided,  of  course,  that  the  Ministers 
are  directly  elected  by  the  Chamber.  In  France  at  present  a 
Minister  need  not  be  a  member  of  Parliament,  and,  in  any  case, 
he  has  the  right  to  speak,  although  not  to  vote,  in  both  Houses 
of  Parliament. 


THE  POLITICAL  SYSTEM          109 

of  August  1914.  Early  in  1915  it  was  already  evi- 
dent that  drastic  changes  in  the  methods  of  the 
Ministry  of  War  were  urgently  necessary.  The 
supply  of  munitions  was  quite  inadequate  and  no 
effort  was  being  made  to  increase  production;  the 
General  Staff  of  the  French  Army  continued  to 
oppose  the  use  of  heavy  artillery  in  the  field,  in 
spite  of  the  experience  of  the  war ;  and  the  Director 
of  Armaments  was  a  General  who  refused  on  prin- 
ciple to  supply  the  Army  with  anything  but 
75  guns,  holding  that  even  rifles  were  use- 
less. M.  Millerand  obstinately  defended  the  ob- 
scurantist policy  of  the  Ministry  of  War-  and 
refused  to  listen  to  the  repeated  demands  of  the 
Army  Committees  of  the  Senate  and  the  Chamber 
for  a  change  in  methods  and  persons.  The  Army 
Committee  of  the  Senate,  of  which  M.  Clemenceau 
was  presiHent,  sent  to  the  President  of  the  Repub- 
lic and  the  Prime  Minister  an  exhaustive  report  on 
the  situation  which  was  a  damning  and  unanswer- 
able indictment  of  M.  Millerand 's  administration. 
M.  Viviani  made  more  than  one  effort  to  induce 
M.  Millerand  to  resign,  but  the  latter  persistently 
refused  to  do  so.  When  the  matter  was  raised  in  the 
Chamber,  M.  Viviani  made  it  a  question  of  confi- 
dence and  defended  M.  Millerand,  who,  as  the 
Chamber  would  not  take  the  responsibility  of  over- 
turning the  Government,  remained  in  office  for  more 
than  a  year  with  disastrous  consequences  to  France 
and  her  Allies. 

These  reforms  in  the  Constitution  would  make  it 
unnecessary  to  retain  the  office  of  President  of  the 
Republic,  which  could  be  suppressed.  Only  his 
ceremonial  functions  would  remain  and  those 
could  quite  well  be  performed  by  the  Prime 
Minister  for  the  time  being.  It  would  also 
be  unnecessary  to  preserve  the  power  of  dis- 


110         MY  SECOND  COUNTRY 

solving  the  Chamber.  At  present  the  President  of 
the  Republic — that  is,  in  practice,  the  Prime 
Minister — has  the  right  to  dissolve  the  Chamber 
with  the  consent  of  the  Senate.  The  light  has  been 
exercised  only  once  in  the  history  of  the  Third 
Republic — by  Marshal  MacMahon  in  1877.  The 
circumstances  in  which  it  was  exercised  have  pre- 
vented any  of  his  successors  from  attempting  to 
follow  his  example,  but  it  is  a  mistake  to  say,  as  is 
commonly  said,  that  the  dissolution  of  the  Chamber 
by  Marshal  MacMahon  was  unconstitutional,  for  the 
consent  of  the  Senate  was  obtained  to  it.  What 
was  unconstitutional  was  Marshal  MacMahon 's 
previous  conduct  in  dismissing  a  Ministry  that 
had  the  confidence  of  the  Chamber  and  appointing 
one  that  had  not.  So  long  as  the  present  system 
of  nominating  Ministers  continues,  it  may  be 
desirable  to  retain  the  power  of  dissolution;  there 
have  been  occasions  during  the  present  century 
when  no  Government  could  secure  a  permanent 
majority  in  the  Chamber  and  when  a  dissolution 
might  have  cleared  the  air.  But,  if  and  when  the 
Ministers  are  directly  and  individually  elected  by 
the  Chamber,  it  would  be  enough  to  give  a  certain 
proportion  of  the  electors  in  any  constituency  the 
right  to  demand  at  any  time  a  poll  on  the  question 
of  withdrawing  their  Deputy's  mandate.  The  dura- 
tion of  Parliament  should  also  be  reduced  to  two 
years,  or  three  at  most. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE   DISCREDIT   OF  PARLIAMENT  AND   ITS   CAUSES 

"  How  I  laughed  till  I  cried,  rocking  myself  to  and  fro,  in  my 
pleasure  at  recognising  in  all  their  perfection  those  two  old  and 
implacable  enemies  of  the  honest  man  :  the  Administration  and 
the  Law." — GEORGES  COURTELINE. 

THE  French  Socialist  Party  will  go  to  the  country 
at  the  next  election  with  a  programme  including  the 
immediate  reform  of  the  Constitution  more  or  less 
on  the  lines  indicated  in  the  last  chapter,  but  a 
reform  of  the  French  Constitution  is  not  an  easy 
matter.  Amendments  of  the  Constitution  can  be 
made  only  by  the  National  Assembly — the  Senate 
and  the  Chamber  of  Deputies  sitting  together  as 
one  House — and  the  National  Assembly  can  be 
summoned  for  the  purpose  only  by  a  resolution 
adopted  by  a  clear  majority  of  all  the  members  of 
the  Senate  and  the  Chamber.  It  is  improbable  that 
151  Senators  would  consent  to  a  meeting  of  the 
National  Assembly  if  they  thought  that  the  aboli- 
tion of  the  Senate  would  be  proposed,  as  it  certainly 
would  be ;  and  if  the  Senators  voted  solidly  at  the 
National  Assembly  against  their  own  suppression, 
it  would  have  to  be  supported  by  more  than  three- 
fourths  of  the  Chamber  in  order  to  be  passed. 
Moreover,  it  may  be  too  late  for  any  reform,  how- 
ever drastic,  of  the  present  Constitution.  The 

111 


112         MY  SECOND   COUNTRY 

Socialist  Party  in  its  manifesto  on  the  subject  spoke 
of  such  a  reform  as  an  immediate  necessity,  not  as 
a  complete  satisfaction  of  its  ultimate  demands. 
It  declared  that  revolution  was  necessary,  and  that 
it  must  be  effected  by  direct  action  if  necessary ;  it 
also  declared  that  the  revolution  would  probably 
be  followed  by  a  temporary  "  dictatorship  of  the 
proletariat."  In  fact,  the  Parliamentary  system 
is  gravely  discredited  in  France;  anti-parliamen- 
tarism is  rapidly  increasing  and  is  of  two  kinds — 
reactionary  and  revolutionary.  The  reactionaries 
wish  to  substitute  autocratic  for  Parliamentary 
government;  the  revolutionaries  tend  more  and 
more  towards  a  system  resembling  that  of  the 
Russian  Soviet  Republic,  based  on  decentralisation 
and  communal  autonomy.  This  is  no  new  ideal  in 
France :  the  Commune  of  Paris  in  1871  was  not 
unlike  the  Soviet  system  in  a  French  form,  and  the 
Commune  has  never  lost  its  hold  on  the  imaginations 
and  sympathies  of  French  revolutionaries,  who 
still  regard  it  as  an  unsuccessful  but  glorious 
attempt  to  realise  their  ideals.  Every  year  the 
Parisian  Socialists  and  Trade  Unionists  make  a 
solemn  pilgrimage  to  the  "  mur  des  federes"— the 
wall  in  Pere-Lachaise  cemetery  in  front  of  which 
the  communards  were  shot  by  the  soldiers  of  General 
de  Gallifet.  A  large  plot  of  ground  adjoining  the 
wall  has  been  acquired  by  the  Socialist  party  as  a 
burying-ground  for  its  members. 

It  is  impossible  to  deny  that  the  growing  dis- 
content with  the  Parliamentary  system  in  France 
has  too  much  justification.  I  have  already  said 
that  there  are  many  signs  of  an  approaching  end 
of  the  present  regime.  Among  them  is  the  huge 
crop  of  political  scandals  during  the  last  two  years ; 
for  political  regimes  in  France  have  a  habit  of 
foundering  in  an  ocean  of  scandals — the  affair  of 


DISCREDIT  OF  PARLIAMENT    113 

the  necklace  was  a  considerable  factor  in  the  down- 
fall of  Louis  XVI  and  Marie-Antoinette.  Some  of 
the  recent  political  scandals  have  no  doubt  been 
manufactured  by  personal  or  political  rancour,  but 
they  are  none  the  less  evidence  of  a  state  of 
nervosity  and  uneasiness  in  the  public  mind.  It 
has  always  been  a  weakness  of  the  French  to 
attribute  reverses  of  fortune  to  treason,  but  the 
hunt  for  traitors  that  has  been  going  on  during  the 
war  has  been  on  an  unprecedented  scale.  More- 
over, political  passion  has  never  been  so  high  nor 
class  feeling  so  bitter  as  since  the  inauguration  of 
the  "Union  Sacree."  The  decadence  of  Parlia- 
ment is  another  symptom  of  approaching  crisis. 
Among  its  principal  causes  are  :  (1)  the  unworkable 
system  established  by  the  Constitution  which  has 
enabled  the  Senate  to  paralyse  Parliament ;  (2)  the 
consequent  barren  record  of  the  Third  Republic  in 
regard  to  reforms,  especially  social  reforms; 
(3)  the  neglect  by  Parliament  of  economic  ques- 
tions; (4)  the  multiplicity  of  political  parties  and 
groups,  which  makes  a  homogeneous  Ministry  im- 
possible and  forces  Governments  to  depend  on  a 
composite  majority  of  which  the  elements  vary  from 
time  to  time ;  (5)  the  demoralising  influence  of  the 
Parliamentary  atmosphere  on  the  Senators  and 
Deputies  and  their  tendency  to  shirk  responsibili- 
ties ;  (6)  the  corruption  in  French  politics. 

We  have  already  seen  how  the  Constitution 
enables  the  Senate  to  paralyse  Parliament.  The 
result  is  that  France  is  behind  England  and  Ger- 
many in  industrial  and  social  legislation;  it  has  a 
miserably  inadequate  system  of  old  age  pensions; 
it  has  no  system  of  national  insurance  against  sick- 
ness or  accidents;  its  Factory  Acts  are  quite  in- 
adequate and  are  not  properly  enforced ;  there  is  no 
proper  inspection  of  factories  and  workshops,  the 

I 


114          MY  SECOND  COUNTRY 

conditions  in  which  are  often  terribly  insanitary; 
women  and  girls  and  even  children  are  allowed  to 
be  worked  scandalously  long  hours ;  there  is  almost 
no  public  sanitation  at  all.1  During  the  whole 
of  my  twelve  years'  residence  in  Paris  I  have 
never  heard  of  a  sanitary  inspector,  much  less 
had  a  visit  from  one ;  yet  there  are  expensive  flats 
in  Paris  the  sanitary  arrangements  of  which  would 
not  be  tolerated  for  a  moment  in  any  English  town. 
A  large  proportion  of  the  houses  in  Paris  are  still 
unattached  to  the  main  drainage  system  and  are 
drained  into  cesspools.  I  know  a  street  in  the 
Faubourg  St.  Germain  where  all  the  houses  are  in 
that  condition.  The  landlords  were  ordered  to 
abolish  the  cesspools  and  attach  the  houses  to  the 
main  drainage  system  about  fifteen  years  ago ;  they 
have  not  done  so  yet  and  noHody  shows  the  least 
disposition  to  make  them — one  of  them  is  a  high 
official  in  a  Government  department.  The  majority 
of  the  concierges'  lodges  in  Paris  are  unfit  for  human 
habitation  and  are  breeding  grounds  of  disease,  and 
the  majority  of  the  servants'  bedrooms — which  in 
a  Parisian  apartment  house  are  all  together  on  the 
.top  floor — are  cupboards  without  proper  light  or 
ventilation.  I  have  more  than  once  declined  to  take 
a  flat  because  I  refused  to  ask  any  human  being  to 
sleep  in  such  places.  All  this  continues  because 
the  propertied  classes  are  the  complete  masters  of 
France  and  not  one  of  the  bourgeois  political  parties 

1  A  general  Eight  Hours  Law  was  passed  in  May  1919,  but 
it  simply  established  the  principle  of  an  eight-hour  day  and  left 
the  application  to  each  trade  to  be  settled  by  Rdglements & 'adminis- 
tration publique,  that  is  to  say  regulations  with  the  force  of  law 
(answering  to  Orders  in  Council)  made  by  the  Government  after 
taking  the  advice  of  the  Conseil  d'Etat,  or  by  further  laws. 
The  application  of  the  eight-hour  day  to  the  mines  was  regulated 
by  a  law  passed  in  June  1919.  In  most  other  trades  it  has  not 
yet  been  applied  and  is  not  likely  to  be.  It  was  a  mere  vote- 
catching  device  never  intended  to  be  put  into  force. 


DISCREDIT  OF  PARLIAMENT    115 

dares  to  touch  their  pockets.  Yet  enormous  sums 
of  public  money  are  being  spent  to  cure  tuber- 
culosis while  the  insanitary  conditions  which  make 
the  ratio  of  that  terrible  disease  much  higher  than 
in  England  are  left  untouched.1 

The  Senate  is  not  entirely  to  blame  for  this  state  of 
things.  What  is  particularly  surprising  is  that  even 
the  Socialist  party  has  never  seriously  tackled  mat- 
ters of  this  kind,  although  one  would  have  thought 
that  they  were  its  particular  business.  This  is  not 
because  of  any  doctrinaire  objection  to  merely 
palliative  measures  or  any  all-or-nothing  policy; 
for  the  Socialist  party  devoted  itself  for  six  years  to 
the  anti-clerical  campaign,  which  had  no  direct 
connection  with  Socialism  although  it  undoubtedly 
promoted  its  growth,  and  later  concentrated  all 
its  energies  for  several  years  on  Proportional 
Representation.  The  exaggerated  importance 
attached  by  Jaures  to  the  latter  reform  was,  indeed, 
the  greatest  mistake  of  his  political  career,  for  it 
divided  the  forces  of  the  Left — since  the  Radicals 
were  opposed  to  P.R. — at  a  moment  when  the 
reaction  once  more  became  threatening,  and  by 
diverting  attention  from  the  growth  of  militarism 
and  Chauvinism  undoubtedly  contributed  to  fheir 
triumph  in  1912-1914  with  all  its  disastrous  con- 
sequences. Far  from  adhering  too  strictly  to  social 
and  economic  questions,  the  Socialist  party  has 
neglected  them  in  practice  almost  as  much  as  the 
other  parties.  It  has  been  active  in  propagating 
Socialist  doctrine — quite  properly  and  rightly — but 
it  has  not  concerned  itself  with  immediate  social 
and  economic  reforms,  the  advocacy  of  which  would 

1  There  are  from  150,000  to  200,000  deaths  from  tuberculosis 
in  France  every  year,  and  the  general  death-rate  is  very  high, 
although  the  climate  of  the  greater  part  of  the  country  is  re- 
markably healthy. 

I  2 


116         MY  SECOND   COUNTRY 

have  enormously  increased  its  hold  on  the  country. 
Too  many  French  Socialist  Deputies  have  paid  very 
little  attention  to  economics ;  their  socialism  is  little 
more  than  a  vague  aspiration.  Hence  it  is  that 
the  Socialist  party  has  never  given  serious  con- 
sideration to  the  question  of  Free  Trade  and 
Protection,  to  the  democratisation  of  the  adminis- 
trative system,  or  to  the  various  questions  that 
have  just  been  mentioned.  It  has  been  too  much 
disposed  to  restrict  its  advocacy  of  immediate 
reforms  to  an  indiscriminate  demand  for  State 
monopolies,  which,  as  Jules  Guesde  has  pointed  out, 
do  not  at  all  conduce  to  the  advent  of  Socialism  or 
weaken  in  any  way  the  capitalist  system,  and  which 
in  present  economic  conditions  are  usually  per- 
nicious. A  bourgeois  capitalist  State  is  quite 
incompetent  to  control  or  administer  industry ;  in 
France  State  monopolies  are  almost  invariably  mis- 
managed and  the  deplorable  experience  that  the 
French  people  has  had  of  their  incompetence  tends 
to  discredit  Socialism  in  so  far  as  it  is  identified 
with  them.1  I  am  glad  to  say  that  there  is 
now  a  strong  reaction  in  the  French  Socialist  party 
against  Etatisme,  which  is  not  only  different  from, 
but  even  opposed  to,  social  democracy,  nor  have 
all  French  Socialists  acquiesced  in  their  identifica- 
tion— Jules  Guesde  and  the  strict  Marxists  voted 
against  the  purchase  by  the  State  of  the  Western 
Railway  of  France,  one  of  the  worst  bargains  ever 
made  by  a  Government. 

The  list  of  immediately  urgent  reforms  is  by  no 
means  exhausted ;  there  are  many  other  matters 
which  the  Socialist  party  might  have  taken  up  to 
its  own  advantage  and  that  of  the  country.  Gener- 
ally speaking,  French  law  favours  the  landlord 
against  the  tenant,  the  capitalist  against  the  man 
1  See  Chapter  VII,  page  235. 


DISCREDIT  OF  PARLIAMENT     117 

who  earns  his  living,  the  creditor  against  the  debtor. 
This  is  not  a  legal  treatise  and  it  is  impossible  to 
enter  into  this  matter  in  detail,  but  one  of  the  most 
glaring  examples  may  be  mentioned — the  enormous 
powers  given  by  the  law  to  the  owners  of  house 
property.  A  French  landlord  is  allowed  by  the  law 
to  force  a  tenant  to  furnish  and  keep  furnished  a 
house  or  flat  during  the  whole  of  his  tenancy  with 
objects  of  sufficient  value  to  cover  th,e  rent  of  the 
whole  period  for  which  the  premises  are  taken.  The 
tenant  not  only  has  to  pay  the  rent  on  quarter-day, 
but  has  to  give  the  landlord  a  guarantee  that  he 
will  be  able  to  pay  it  until  the  end  of  his  tenancy. 
If  he  has,  for  instance,  a  nine  years'  lease  of  a  flat 
rented  at  £100  a  year,  he  must  put  furniture  in  it 
to  the  value  of  at  least  £900,  and,  if  he  wishes  to 
move  before  the  end  of  the  tenancy,  the  landlord 
can  prevent  him  from  taking  away  his  furniture 
unless  and  until  he  has  paid  the  whole  of  the  rent 
for  the  unexpired  term,  even  though  the  rent  be 
fully  paid  up  to  date.  The  only  alternative  for  the 
tenant  is  to  find  somebody  else  to  take  over  the 
tenancy,  and  the  landlord  can  arbitrarily  refuse  to 
accept  any  new  tenant  without  giving  any  reason, 
unless  there  is  a  provision  to  the  contrary  in  the 
lease  or  agreement.  I  have  never  consented  to 
take  a  flat  unless  the  landlord  would  agree  to  a 
provision  limiting  his  power  of  refusal  and  I 
have  found  many  landlords  unwilling  to  agree 
to  it.  It  must  not  be  thought  that  this  power  is 
only  theoretical.  The  landlord— or  rather  landlady, 
for  it  was  a  woman — of  an  Italian  friend  of  mine 
who  was  called  tQ  Italy  by  the  war  refused  out  of 
mere  spite  to  accept  any  other  tenant  and  forced 
him  to  keep  the  flat  rather  than  pay  at  once  the 
rent  of  the  two  years  of  the  lease  which  were  un- 
expired. I  am  glad  to  add  that  in  this  case 


118         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

Madame  Vautour— the  Parisian  slang  term  for  an 
owner  of  house  property — was  hoist  with  her  own 
petard,  for  the  Courts  decided  that  my  friend,  the 
subject  of  an  allied  nation,  was  entitled  to  benefit 
by  the  moratorium  which  exempted  all  mobilised 
men  from  the  payment  of  rent  until  six  months 
after  the  signature  of  peace.  Landlords  also  have 
the  right  under  French  law  to  force  a  tenant  to  pay 
three  or  six  months'  rent  in  advance  on  taking  a 
house  or  flat,  which  amount  is  counted  as  payment 
for  the  last  three  or  six  months  of  the  lease.  The 
landlord  has  thus  the  use  of  his  tenant's  money 
without  interest  for  the  whole  term  of  the  lease, 
and  he  has  further  the  right  to  confiscate  the  sum 
paid  in  the  event  of  any  breach  of  the  lease  on  the 
part  of  the  tenant  without  prejudice  to  any  claim 
for  damages.  A  tenant  in  France  is  compelled  to 
insure  against  fire,  not  only  the  fabric  of  his  own 
house  or  flat,  but  also  those  of  his  next-door  neigh- 
bours' on  either  side  of  him.  These  are  but  some 
examples  of  the  oppressive  powers  of  French  land- 
lords. I  cannot  remember  ever  having  read  of  a 
proposal  that  they  should  be  diminished  in  any 
French  paper  or  heard  of  one  being  made  by  any 
French  politician,  Socialist  or  other.  Yet  such 
matters  as  these  are  far  more  important  to  the 
people  than  the  State  ownership  of  a  railway  or  the 
method  of  voting. 

There  is  another  matter  in  regard  to  which  reform 
is  urgently  needed,  perhaps  more  than  any  other — 
the  judicial  system.  Much  might  be  said  about  the 
delays  of  French  civil  procedure  which  remind  one 
of  the  famous  case  of  Jarndyce  v.  Jarndyce.  I  have 
reason  to  be  informed  on  that  subject,  for  I  was  the 
defendant  in  a  civil  case  which  began  in  January 
1909,  judgment  was  given  In  my  favour  in  Novem- 
ber 1917,  and  I  have  not  yet  obtained  execution  at 


DISCREDIT  OF  PARLIAMENT      119 

the  time  of  writing  (May  1919),  although  there  was 
no  appeal  on  either  side.  I  paid  the  sum  of  money 
claimed  from  me  into  court,  or  rather  into  the  Caisse 
des  Depots  et  Consignations,  which  has  had  the  use 
of  it  for  ten  years  and  does  not  seem  anxious  to  give 
it  up.  It  is  fair  to  say  that  the  war  prolonged  the 
case  by  perhaps  three  years;  it  would  have 
lasted  only  a  trifle  of  seven  years  or  so  in  normal 
times. 

But  far  more  important  to  the  nation  is  the 
criminal  procedure,  since  it  involves  the  loss  of 
liberty,  or  even  of  life,  to  persons  who  may  be 
innocent.  I  have  said  that  the  French  public  has 
no  confidence  in  the  administration  of  justice ;  I  am 
now  obliged  to  add  that  its  want  of  confidence  is 
fully  justified.  The  French  criminal  procedure  is 
quite  literally  mediaeval — it  is,  in  fact,  the  system 
of  the  Inquisition  almost  unchanged.  In  theory, 
French,  like  English,  law  presumes  an  accused 
person  to  be  innocent  until  he  is  proved  to  be 
guilty;  in  practice,  French  judges  assume  him  to  be 
guilty  until  he  has  proved  himself  to  be  innocent. 
In  France,  the  preliminary  stage  of  a  criminal  case 
is  called  the  instruction;  the  juge  ^instruction 
answers  to  the  magistrate  before  whom  an  English 
prisoner  is  first  brought.  I  am  speaking,  of 
course,  of  important  offences ;  lesser  ones  are  dealt 
with  directly  by  the  Tribunal  Correctionel,  which 
answers  to  the  English  police  court ;  it  is  composed 
of  three  judges  sitting  without  a  jury.  The  juge 
(V instruction  has  to  decide  whether  or  not  an 
accused  person  shall  be  committed  for  trial,  but  his 
functions  and  methods  are  very  different  from  those 
of  the  English  magistrate  who  has  the  same  duty. 
The  magistrate  need  not  go  thoroughly  into  the 
merits  of  the  case— when  the  accused  reserves  his 
defence,  he  cannot;  all  that  he  has  to  decide  is 


120         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

whether  there  is  a  prima  facie  case  for  a  jury, 
supposing  that  he  is  not  himself  competent  to  deal 
with  the  matter  or  does  not  think  it  desirable  to  do 
so.      The    fact    that    the    magistrate    commits    a 
prisoner  for  trial  does  not  necessarily  mean  that  he 
believes  h"im  to  be  guilty  nor  does  the  magistrate 
think  it  his  duty  to  try  to  prove  the  guilt  of  the 
prisoner;  he  is  an  arbiter  between  the  prosecution 
and  the  defence.     The  juge  d' instruction,  on  the 
other  hand,  is  a   collaborator  of  the  prosecution, 
and  his  business  is  to  try  to  establish  the  guilt  of 
the  accused  person — indeed  he  begins  by  assuming 
his  guilt.     If  he  is  finally  convinced  of  the  innocence 
of  the  accused,  or  even  not  convinced  of  his  guilt, 
he  returns  a  non-lieu,  that  is  to  say,  he  dismisses 
the  case ;  he  commits  a  prisoner  for  trial  only  if  and 
when  he  himself  believes  him  to  be  guilty,  and  he 
makes  a  report  to  that  effect.     It  will  be  seen  that 
the  powers  of  a  juge  d' 'instruction  are  much  greater 
than  those  of  an  English  magistrate,  and  that  the 
instruction  is  a  much  more  important  factor  in  a 
French  criminal  case  than  is  the  preliminary  in- 
quiry in  an  English  one.     Indeed  the  instruction  in 
France  is  more  important  than  the  actual  trial,  for 
the  report  of  the  juge  d9  instruction  is  the  most 
important  evidence  for  the  prosecution  at  the  trial ; 
it   is   a    voluminous    document    giving    the  whole 
history  of  the  case,  the  evidence  of  the  witnesses 
heard  during-  the  instruction,  and  the  judge's  reasons 
for  concluding  that  the  prisoner  is  guilty.     When- 
ever there  is  a  miscarriage  of  justice  in  France,  it 
can   almost   always  be  traced  to  the  instruction  ; 
that  is  the  experience  of  all  that  have  investigated 
such  cases. 

The  conditions  in  which  the  instruction  takes 
place  make  a  miscarriage  of  justice  very  probable. 
In  the  first  place,  the  instruction  is  secret ;  until 


DISCREDIT  OF  PARLIAMENT    121 

recently  counsel  could  not  even  be  present  at  it,  but 
for  some  years  it  has  been  the  law  that  the  accused 
must  be  accompanied  by  his  counsel  during  his 
interviews  with  the  juge  d' 'instruction.  Counsel  is 
not,  however,  present  at  the  examination  of  wit- 
nesses, although  he  has  access  to  their  depositions. 
This  secrecy  is  most  injurious  to  the  accused,  who 
is  kept  under  a  cloud  for  weeks  and  even  months 
while  the  public  has  no  means  of  judging  the  value 
of  the  charges  against  him,  and  it  does  not  serve  the 
ends  of  justice.  It  is  obvious  that  secrecy  gives  the 
opportunity  for  irregularities,  pressure,  and  abuses 
of  all  kinds,  and,  human  nature  being  what  it  is,  it 
would  be  unreasonable  to  expect  the  opportunity 
never  to  be  used.  One  of  the  first  and  most 
essential  guarantees  of  justice  is  publicity;  the 
secrecy  of  the  instruction  is  undoubtedly  one  of  the 
chief  causes  of  the  distrust  and  suspicion  with  which 
the  administration  of  justice  is  generally  regarded  in 
France.  The  law  quite  logically  forbids  the  revela- 
tion or  publication  of  any  information  about  the 
instruction,  but  the  law  is  not  observed  in  practice. 
The  newspapers  interview  witnesses  as  they  leave 
the  chambers  of  the  juge  ^instruction  and  publish 
their  accounts  of  their  own  evidence,  which  are 
almost  invariably  inaccurate.  All  sorts  of  false  or 
garbled  reports  of  the  proceedings  appear  in  the 
Press,  which  sometimes  also  publishes  communica- 
tions of  an  obviously  semi-official  character  illegally 
supplied  to  it  by  the  juge  d9instruction  himself,  or 
even  by  the  Ministry  of  Justice.  These  communica- 
tions usually  aim  at  discrediting  the  accused  and 
are  often  more  tendencious  than  the  ordinary  news- 
paper reports.  The  accused  has  no  remedy  except 
that  of  protestation.  Moreover,  the  newspapers 
are  allowed  to  comment  freely  on  the  case  while  it 
is  proceeding  and  to  defend  the  thesis  of  the  guilt 


122         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

or  innocence  of  the  accused  without  even  having 
the  material  for  forming  a  judgment.  As  M.  Pierre 
Mille  once  said  in  the  Temps,  in  England  the  Press 
is  allowed  to  know  the  facts  of  a  case  and  the  evi- 
dence given  in  it,  but  it  is  not  allowed  to  comment 
on  them  until  the  verdict  has  been  given ;  in  France 
the  Press  is  allowed  to  comment  on  them  without 
knowing  them.  In  the  Steinheil  murder  case,  to 
give  only  one  example,  the  Matin  was  permitted  to 
assume  from  the  first  that  Mme.  Steinheil  was  the 
murderer  of  her  husband  and  her  mother  and  to 
denounce  a  new  person  every  other  day  as  her 
accomplice,  for  there  is  no  effective  libel  law  in 
France.1  The  prejudice  inevitably  created  by  such 
methods  as  these  in  the  minds  of  the  jurors  who 

1  The  French  law  does  not  permit  the  justification  of  a  libel  ; 
if  the  publication  complained  of  is  defamatory,  the  Court  must 
condemn  the  defendant,  whether  it  be  true  or  not.  The  result 
is,  on  the  one  hand,  that  an  action  for  libel  cannot  clear  the 
prosecutor's  character,  and  that  the  verdict  carries  no  weight, 
and,  on  the  other,  that  the  Court,  having  no  means  of  knowing 
whether  the  defamation  is  true  or  not,  always  inflicts  trivial 
damages,  which  are  no  deterrent.  Moreover,  the  delays  in 
French  procedure  are  such  that  an  action  for  libel  usually  comes 
on  so  long  after  the  publication  of  the  libel  that  the  latter  is 
already  forgotten  and  the  harm,  if  any,  has  been  done.  Few 
people  think  it  worth  while  to  bring  a  libel  action  in  these  cir- 
cumstances ;  the  majority  prefer,  if  they  do  anything,  to  use 
the  right  of  reply — the  French  law  obliges  a  paper  which  has 
attacked  anybody  to  publish  a  reply  from  him  in  the  same  place 
and  of  the  same  length  as  the  attack.  But  papers  often  refuse 
to  obey  the  law  in  this  regard  and  then  prolonged  legal  pro- 
ceedings are  necessary  to  make  them  do  so.  The  net  result  is 
that  French  papers  publish  with  impunity  outrageous  calumnies 
on  public  men  and  even  on  private  individuals,  and  some  of  them 
find  a  source  of  income  in  the  threat  of  such  publication.  Press 
calumny  is  used,  as  Anatole  France  has  said,  by  the  capitalist 
interests  to  ruin  any  politician  that  has  the  courage  and  honesty 
to  refuse  to  be  ruled  by  them.  M.  Caillaux  is  one  of  the  most 
conspicuous  victims  of  this  method.  The  lack  of  an  effective 
libel  law  is  the  reason  why  French  juries  so  often  acquit  people 
who  have  taken  the  law  into  their  own  hands  by  shooting  the 
editor  of  a  paper  that  has  calumniated  them. 


DISCREDIT  OF  PARLIAMENT    123 

eventually  try  the  case  need  not  be  insisted  upon ; 
indeed,  it  is  not  surprising  that  miscarriages  of 
justice  are  numerous  in  France.  What  is  surpris- 
ing is  that  there  are  not  many  more.1 

In  the  secrecy  of  his  chambers,  uncontrolled  by 
public  opinion,  the  juge  d' 'instruction  subjects  the 
accused  person  to  a  severe  cross-examination  with 
the  object  of  entrapping  him  into  compromising 
admissions.  It  may  easily  be  imagined  how  an 
ignorant  or  stupid  person  is  likely  to  fare  in  the 
hands  of  a  skilled  lawyer  with  the  power  to  put  him 
on  the  rack  several  times  a  week  for  months  to- 
gether, especially  when  he  is  physically  and 
mentally  weakened  by  long  detention  in  solitary 
confinement.  For  bail  is  seldom  granted  in  France, 
and  detention  is  deliberately  used  as  a  means  of 
pressure  on  an  accused  person  in  the  hope  that  he 
will  finally  inculpate  himself.  Moreover,  the  condi- 
tions of  what  is  called  in  France  "preventive" 
imprisonment  are  much  more  severe  than  in 
England ;  the  prisoner,  whom  the  law  assumes  to 
be  innocent,  is  not  allowed  to  have  any  visitors 
except  such  as  are  authorised  by  the  juge  d'instruc- 
tion,  who  has  complete  discretion  in  the  matter. 
M.  Caillaux,  for  instance,  who  will  have  been  in 
prison  for  two  years  before  his  trial,  has  not,  during 

1  Inquiries  into  violent  or  sudden  deaths  are  also  held  in  secret 
by  a  Juge  (^instruction  and  are  sometimes  <  very  prolonged, 
lasting  for  many  months.  While  they  last,  if  the  case  be  in 
any  way  sensational,  there  are  misleading  and  inaccurate  reports 
in  the  Press,  a  crop  of  rumours  more  or  less  false,  and  a  general 
atmosphere  of  suspicion.  There  are  still  people  in  France  who 
believe  that  President  Fe"lix  Faure  was  murdered,  and  that  a 
disreputable  Deputy,  called  Syveton,  who  committed  suicide 
about  fifteen  years  ago,  was  killed  by  M.  Combes  or  by  the 
Freemasons.  These  and  similar  legends  would  never  have  grown 
up  had  a  system  of  public  inquests  existed  in  France.  Sudden 
deaths  are  not  always  investigated  and  a  doctor's  certificate  is 
much  too  readily  accepted  as  finals 


124         MY  SECOND   COUNTRY 

the  whole  of  that  period,  been  allowed  to  receive 
any  visitors  except  his  wife  and  his  counsel.  Nobody 
supposed  that  M.  Caillaux  would  fly  the  country 
if  he  were  allowed  out  on  bail,  but  it  suited  the 
purposes  of  the  Government  that  he  should  not  be 
at  liberty;  it  is  true  that  his  case  was  at 
first  in  the  hands  of  a  military  tribunal,  but  the 
same  thing  might  have  happened  if  it  had  been 
otherwise. 

The  length  of  time  often  taken  by  an  instruction 
is  one  of  the  worst  abuses  of  the  French  judicial  sys- 
tem ;  in  a  case  of  any  importance — political  or  other 
— it  usually  lasts  a  year  or  more.  There  is  no  Habeas 
Corpus  Act  in  France  and  no  legal  limit  to  the  time 
which  an  instruction  may  take.  Nor  is  it  necessary 
that  there  should  be  any  evidence  against  an  accused 
person  before  he  is  arrested.  It  is  a  common  prac- 
tice to  arrest  a  man  on  mere  suspicion  and  keep  him 
in  prison  indefinitely  while  the  juge  d' 'instruction 
tries  to  find  evidence  against  him  and  repeatedly 
cross-examines  him  in  the  hope  of  inducing  him  to 
commit  himself ;  any  self-respecting  judge  will  wait 
a  year  before  he  gives  up  the  attempt,  especially  if 
the  Government  in  power  has  any  particular  reason 
for  desiring  a  conviction.  The  case  of  the  late 
M.  Turmel  was  a  bad  example  of  this  method.  He 
was  arrested  simply  because  a  number  of  Swiss 
bank  notes  were  found  in  his  locker  at  the  Chamber 
of  Deputies,  and  was  kept  in  prison  for  months  on 
a  charge  of  treason,  although  no  evidence  of  it  was 
ever  discovered.  There  is  nothing  illegal  in  possess- 
ing the  bank  notes  of  a  neutral  country  in  time  of 
war  and  at  first  M.  Turmel  refused,  on  the  advice 
of  his  counsel,  to  answer  any  questions.  His 
refusal  was  quite  legal,  for  there  is  no  law  compelling 
an  accused  person  to  answer  any  questions,  but, 
as  the  judge  declared  his  intention  of  keeping 


DISCREDIT  OF  PARLIAMENT    125 

M.  Turmel  in  prison  until  he  did  answer,  the  latter 
at  last  gave  various  conflicting  and  obviously  un- 
true accounts  of  the  origin  of  the  money.  That 

fact  shows  that  the  origin  was  a  shady  one an 

hypothesis  widely  credited  in  Paris  was  that 
M.  Turmel  had  made  money  by  houses  of  ill-fame 
in  Switzerland— but  it  is  no  evidence  of  treason, 
and  there  is,  in  fact,  not  the  smallest  reason  to 
suppose  that  M.  Turmel  was  a  traitor  to  his 
country,  although  he  was  not  at  all  a  reputable 
person.  He  ultimately  died  in  prison  protesting 
his  innocence.  In  England  the  case  against  him 
would  have  been  dismissed  at  the  first  or  second 
hearing. 

This  case  was  also  an  example  of  the  pernicious 
influence  of  politics  on  the  administration  of  justice 
in  France.  It  is  probable  that  the  treatment  of 
M.  Turmel  was  due  to  a  hope  that  he  might  in- 
criminate M.  Caillaux ;  he  was,  in  fact,  induced  to 
make  some  statements  about  M.  Caillaux,  but  they 
were  either  so  inaccurate  or  so  unimportant  that  no 
use  could  be  made  of  them,  and  they  were  not 
even  mentioned  by  the  Public  Prosecutor  in  the 
indictment  of  M.  Caillaux.  In  any  case,  whatever 
may  have  been  behind  the  Turmel  affair,  there  can 
be  no  doubt  about  political  interference  in  judicial 
matters;  the  French  system  makes  it  inevitable. 
Justice  in  France  is  not  independent;  it  is  under 
the  control  of  the  Minister  of  Justice,  that  is  to  say, 
of  a  politician.  It  is  the  Minister  of  Justice  who 
decides  to  what  particular  juge  d'instruction  a  case 
is  to  be  entrusted,  and  even  what  particular  judge 
is  to  preside  at  the  trial — there  are  three  judges  at 
a  French  criminal  trial,  but  the  President  is  the 
only  one  that  counts.  The  Minister  of  Justice  can 
and  does  transfer  a  case  from  one  juge  d'instruction 
to  another  at  his  will  and  pleasure;  he  fixes  the 


126         MY  SECOND   COUNTRY 

dates  of  trials  and  postpones  them  when  he  pleases, 
not  that  he  has  legally  the  power  to  postpone  them, 
but  he  can  instruct  the  Public  Prosecutor  to  apply 
for  a  postponement,  which  is  never  refused  by  the 
Court  in  such  circumstances.  When  Villain,  the 
murderer  of  Jaures,  himself  applied  to  the  Court 
to  postpone  his  trial  until  after  the  war,  the  appli- 
cation was  opposed  by  the  Public  Prosecutor  and 
refused.  A  fortnight  later,  the  Government  of  the 
day  having  changed  its  mind,  the  Public  Prosecutor 
himself  applied  for  the  postponement  of  the  trial 
until  after  the  war  and  it  was  granted. 
Villain  was  eventually  tried  four  years  and  seven 
months  after  the  date  of  the  murder.  What  respect 
for  the  administration  of  justice  can  there  be  in 
a  country  where  a  court  of  justice  acts  in  this  way 
merely  to  suit  the  political  convenience  of  a  Govern- 
ment ?  It  is  not  only  for  political  reasons  that 
pressure  is  brought  to  bear  on  judges.  Accused 
persons  have  found  it  a  great  advantage  to  them  to 
have  a  friend  or  acquaintance  in  the  Cabinet  or  to 
know  people  that  have ;  in  this,  as  in  other  matters, 
influence — the  piston — goes  a  long  way  in  France. 
This  is  only  to  be  expected,  since  the  man  on  whom 
the  advancement  and  the  career  of  those  who 
administer  justice  depend  is  also  their  legal  superior. 
In  the  same  way,  the  military  judges  are  entirely 
under  the  control  of  the  Minister  of  War,  who  is 
legally  the  "  Chef  de  la  Justice  militaire,"  who 
instructs  the  Public  Prosecutor,  decides  to  whom  the 
instruction  is  to  be  entrusted,  and  chooses,  at  least 
indirectly,  the  members  of  the  court-martial. 
In  Paris,  the  members  of  the  court-martial 
are  nominated  by  the  military  governor,  who  is 
under  the  direct  orders  of  the  Minister  of  War. 
This  system  helps  to  make  the  Dreyfus  case  more 
intelligible.  The  Public  Prosecutor  is  no  more 


DISCREDIT  OF  PARLIAMENT    127 

independent  than  the  judges;  he  takes  his  orders 
from  the  Government.  Nor  is  influence  exercised 
only  by  politicians.  In  a  case  within  my  own 
knowledge  in  which  a  woman  of  good  family  with 
influential  social  connections  was  accused  of  a 
fraud,  the  juge  ^instruction  actually  received 
personal  friends  of  hers,  not  as  witnesses,  and  was 
almost  persuaded  by  their  representations  to  dismiss 
the  case.  Only  the  firm  attitude  of  the  counsel 
for  the  plaintiff  prevented  him  from  doing 
so  and  he  ultimately  committed  the  lady  for 
trial.  One  of  the  reasons  given  to  him  for  letting 
her  off  was  that  she  was  a  friend  of  King 
Edward  VII. 

Another  evil  is  the  way  in  which  criminal  pro- 
cedure is  abused  by  private  persons  for  their  own 
ends — usually  to  obtain  payment  of  a  debt.  In 
France,  anybody  can  lay  an  information  ("  deposer 
une  plainte")  against  another;  it  is  then  for  the 
Public  Prosecutor  to  decide  whether  or  not  there  is 
a  prima  facie  case  for  taking  action  against  the 
person  accused.  Even  if  the  accusation  turns  out 
to  be  quite  baseless,  the  person  unjustly  accused 
has  no  remedy  against  the  accuser;  an  action  for 
malicious  prosecution  can  lie  only  against  a  person 
who,  instead  of  merely  laying  an  information,  has 
summoned  another  directly  before  the  Tribunal 
Correctionel.  The  result  is  that  "  plaintes  "  are 
sent  in  recklessly,  sometimes  out  of  mere  spite, 
sometimes  by  way  of  intimidation  to  recover  a  civil 
debt  or  for  some  similar  reason.  Although  there  is 
no  publicity,  the  fact  that  a  "  plainte  "  has  been 
made  against  a  man  is  inscribed  in  his  "  easier 
judiciare  "  (police  register),  and  if  no  action  has 
been  taken  upon  it  that  fact  is  not  always  recorded. 
Moreover,  the  author  of  the  "plainte"  usually 
takes  care  to  tell  people  about  it,  and  there  are 


128         MY   SECOND  COUNTRY 

always  some  ready  to  say  that  there  is  probably 
something  in  it.  A  "  plainte  "  is  thus  sometimes 
an  effective  method  of  intimidating  a  timid 
person,  especially  since,  as  has  already  been 
said,  all  Frenchmen  have  a  horror  of  any  sort 
of  contact  with  the  police  or  the  administration  of 
justice. 

French  judicial  procedure  has  some  excellent 
points ;  for  instance,  criminal  and  civil  proceedings 
can  be  taken  at  the  same  time  against  a  person  for 
the  same  matter.  If,  for  example,  X  has  defrauded 
Y  of  a  sum  of  money,  Y  can  move  the  Public 
Prosecutor  to  take  criminal  proceedings  against  X, 
in  which  Y  can  appear  as  "  parti  civil  ";  if  X  is 
convicted,  the  Court  not  only  punishes  him,  but  also 
gives  judgment  against  him  in  Y's  favour.  But 
this  system,  excellent  in  itself,  is  sometimes  abused 
owing  to  the  practice  in  the  less  serious  cases  of 
allowing  the  criminal  prosecution  to  be  withdrawn 
if  the  accused  pays  up,  which  encourages  the  use  of 
criminal  procedure  to  recover  a  debt.  The  absence 
in  French  criminal  trials  of  anything  like  the  laws 
of  evidence,  which  is  often  criticised  by  English 
lawyers,  is,  in  my  opinion,  an  advantage.  The 
system  of  asking  a  witness  to  say  what  he  knows 
about  the  case  and  allowing  him  to  make  his  own 
statement  instead  of  merely  answering  questions  no 
doubt  prolongs  the  proceedings,  but  I  am  convinced 
that  it  serves  the  ends  of  justice  better  than  the 
English  system.  A  witness  thus  allowed  to  say 
what  he  likes  will  almost  invariably  reveal  his  own 
character  and,  if  he  be  not  telling  the  truth,  is 
almost  sure  to  commit  himself;  for,  of  course, 
after  having  made  his  statements  he  can  be 
cross-examined.  What  is  objectionable  is  the 
cross-examination  to  which  the  prisoner  in  a 
criminal  trial  is  subjected  by  the  presiding  judge, 


DISCREDIT  OF  PARLIAMENT    129 

who  usually  presumes  his  guilt.  I  believe  that  this 
practice  is  illegal  and  that  strictly  the  President 
ought  merely  to  put  to  the  prisoner  the  formal 
questions  about  his  name,  place  of  residence,  etc. ; 
but,  whether  legal  or  not,  the  practice  is  universal 
and  it  ought  to  be  stopped.1 

It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  the  evils  of  French 
criminal  procedure,  and  in  particular  of  the  secret 
instruction,  are  recognised  by  the  vast  majority  of 
Frenchmen.  I  never  met  a  criminal  barrister  who 
did  not  condemn  the  secret  instruction,  and  an 
alteration  of  the  law  in  this  regard  has  been 
demanded  for  years  by  leading  members  of  the 
French  Bar.  When  M.  Briand  was  Prime  Minister 
for  the  first  time  he  talked  of  abolishing  the  secret 
instruction  and  substituting  for  it  a  preliminary 
inquiry  in  public  as  in  England.  But  he  did  not 
carry  his  intention  into  effect ;  it  is  possible  that 


1  The  profession  of  notary  or  solicitor  (avoue)  in  France  is  a 
monopoly  ;  the  number  of  notaries  and  solicitors  is  limited,  and 
nobody  can  enter  either  profession  except  by  purchasing  the 
practice  of  a  retiring  member  of  it.  This  objectionable  system, 
which  is  a  survival  of  the  ancien  regime,  means  that  only  men 
with  money  can  become  notaries  or  solicitors,  and  they  some- 
times have  more  money  than  brains,  although,  of  course,  they 
have  to  obtain  certain  qualifications.  French  avouis  are,  as  a 
rule,  less  competent  than  English  solicitors  and  have  a  much 
less  important  position  ;  a  great  deal  of  the  work  done  in  England 
by  solicitors  is  done  in  France  by  barristers  (avocats),  who 
have,  as  a  rule,  more  legal  knowledge  than  the  solicitors.  In 
France,  a  client  can  address  himself  to  a  barrister  directly  without 
passing  through  a  solicitor,  and  it  is  very  common  to  go  first  to 
a  barrister,  who  instructs  the  solicitor,  when  it  becomes  necessary 
to  call  in  his  services,  which  are  required  by  law  for  an  action 
in  the  High  Court.  The  Bar  is  open  to  anybody  that  can  pass 
the  necessary  examinations,  and  the  French  Bar  is  very  brilliant. 
French  judges  are  not,  as  in  England,  chosen  from  the  Bar  ; 
the  judicial  profession  is  a  separate  one,  in  which  men  begin  by 
holding  the  least  important  posts  and  can  rise  to  the  highest. 
Judges  of  every  rank  are  very  badly  paid  and  the  standard  is 
not  so  high  as  in  England. 

K 


130         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

the  proposed  change  was  opposed  by  the  Parquet 1 
and  the  police.  It  is  astonishing  that  no  political 
party,  not  even  the  Socialist,  has  ever  made  a 
serious  attempt  to  get  rid  of  abuses  which  almost 
everybody  condemns  and  which  bring  the  adminis- 
tration of  justice  into  contempt.  The  indifference 
of  politicians  in  this  regard  is,  unfortunately, 
typical,  and  the  fact  that  it  is  so  is  one  of 
the  reasons  why  the  parliamentary  system  is 
discredited. 

I  should,  however,  be  sorry  to  give  the  impres- 
sion that  the  Third  Republic  has  done  nothing.  It 
has  accomplished  at  least  one  great  task — the 
liberation  of  France  from  clerical  domination.  The 
Education  Law  of  1882,  due  to  Jules  Ferry,  which 
secularised  the  national  schools  and  substituted  lay 
teachers  for  the  ecclesiastics  and  nuns  who  had  until 
then  taught  in  many  of  them,  was  a  great  achieve- 
ment which  has  had  an  immense  influence  for  good 
on  France.  Secular  education  has  changed  for  the 
better  in  many  regards  the  mentality  of  the  bulk 
of  the  French  people ;  it  has  produced  more  self- 
reliance  and  initiative  and  increased  toleration.  The 
elementary-school  teachers  are  a  fine  body  of  men 
and  women  whose  influence  has  been  admirable.  To 
them  more  than  to  any  other  body  is  due  the 
diminution  of  Chauvinism  and  the  growth  of  pacific 
and  internationalist  sentiment — there  is  a  great 
difference  in  this  regard  between  the  generations 
that  have  been  educated  in  the  secular  schools  and 
their  predecessors.  The  war,  and  in  particular  the 
victory,  caused  a  recrudescence  of  Chauvinism,  but 
it  seemed  more  general  than  it  really  was,  if  only 

1  The  chief  Public  Prosecutor's  department  in  Paris.  There 
is  an  Assize  Court  with  resident  judges  in  the  chief  town  of  each 
department,  and  to  each  is  attached  a  Public  Prosecutor  (Pro- 
cureur  de  la  Rtpubliquc). 


DISCREDIT  OF  PARLIAMENT    131 

for  the  reason  that  during  the  war  only  Chauvinists 
were  allowed  to  express  their  opinions.  The  seed 
sown  in  the  elementary  schools  will  yet  bear  fruit ; 
already  there  is  a  marked  reaction  against  the  tem- 
porary intoxication  that  victory  produced.  In 
every  country  village  the  elementary-school  teacher 
is  the  centre  of  progressive  thought  and  action,  as 
the  cure  is  the  centre  of  reaction ;  the  school,  how- 
ever humbly,  represents  the  future,  as  the  church 
represents  the  past.  In  the  greater  part  of  rural 
France  the  school  has  conquered  the  church,  not  by 
anti-Catholic  propaganda,  but  simply  by  dissipating 
the  ignorance  and  docility  which  are  essential  con- 
ditions of  clerical  domination ;  but  there  are  still 
many  places  where  the  teacher  has  a  hard  fight. 
Where  the  Church  is  still  strong  the  position  of  a 
teacher  sometimes  calls  almost  for  heroism;  there 
have  been  cases  in  which  quite  young  girls  have 
quietly  continued  to  do  their  duty  in  the  face  of 
boycotting  and  petty  persecution  sometimes  reach- 
ing the  point  of  a  refusal,  instigated  by  the  cure,  to 
supply  them  with  food,  so  that  they  have  had  to 
get  it  from  a  neighbouring  village.  All  over  France 
the  elementary-school  teachers  have  been  the 
standard-bearers  of  progress,  the  pioneers  of  liberal 
ideas;  the  proportion  of  Socialists  among  them  is 
large,  and  they  have  fought  bravely  and  success- 
fully for  the  right  to  combine  for  the  protection  of 
their  own  interests.  In  June  1919  they  added  to 
the  debt  of  gratitude  which  France  already  owed 
them  by  refusing  to  continue  the  distribution  in 
the  schools  of  literature  about  German  atrocities 
supplied  by  the  Government  for  the  purpose  of 
nourishing  racial  hatred. 

The  separation  of  Church  and  State  in  1905  made 
the  neutrality  of  the  nation  in  religious  matters 
complete  and  deprived  the  clergy  of  the  authority 

K  2 


132         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

that  they  derived  from  their  position  as  Government 
officials ;  since  then  the  influence  of  the  Church  has 
rapidly  declined,  especially  in  the  rural  districts. 
Napoleon  devised  the  Concordat  in  the  belief  that 
it  would  enable  him  to  control  the  Church  and  keep 
the  clergy  in  order;  he  soon  found  out  his  error, 
and  himself  declared  that  the  Concordat  was  the 
greatest  mistake  of  his  career.  It  is  not  the 
business  of  the  State  to  control  the  Church,  and 
even  if  it  were  the  Concordat  never  enabled  it  to  do 
so.  Under  the  Restoration  and  the  Second  Empire 
the  Church  to  a  great  extent  controlled  the  State, 
and  that  was  the  case  even  in  the  early  years  of  the 
Third  Republic.  When  the  Church  saw  that  the 
Third  Republic  was  escaping  from  its  control,  it 
became  the  moving  spirit  in  every  attempt  to 
destroy  it,  and  nearly  succeeded  in  the  last  decade 
of  the  nineteenth  century  by  means  of  the  Dreyfus 
affair.  That  awoke  the  French  people  to  the 
danger  and  led  to  the  separation  of  Church  and 
State.  The  neutrality  of  the  State  in  matters  of 
religion  is  carried  to  its  logical  conclusion ;  no 
representative  of  the  Government  attends  a  reli- 
gious ceremony  in  his  official  capacity,  although, 
of  course,  there  is  nothing  to  prevent  him  from 
going  to  Mass  in  his  private  capacity.  Religion 
has  become  in  France  what  it  ought  to  be — a  purely 
private  concern  with  which  the  nation  as  a  whole 
has  nothing  to  do,  since  the  individuals  that  com- 
pose the  nation  are  not  agreed  about  it ;  therefore 
the  representatives  of  the  nation  have  no  right  to 
take  part  in  a  religious  ceremony  in  its  name.  France 
is  the  only  belligerent  country  where  there  have 
been  no  official  religious  ceremonies  of  any  kind 
during  the  war.  French  Christians— Catholic  and 
TProtestant — and  even  French  Jews  have,  of  course, 
applied  to  their  respective  deities  for  assistance  in 


DISCREDIT  OF  PARLIAMENT    133 

slaughtering  their  fellow  Christians  and  fellow  Jews 
on  the  other  side  of  the  Rhine — who  have  returned 
the  compliment — but  that  is  their  affair.  The 
French  nation  as  a  whole  has  left  God  out  of  a  busi- 
ness with  which,  one  would  like  to  believe,  he  had 
nothing  to  do.  It  did  not  pray  for  victory  and  has 
not  returned  thanks  for  it. 

Another  achievement  of  the  Third  Republic  was 
the  Associations  Law  of  1901,  of  which  Waldeck- 
Rousseau  was  the  author.  It  is  known  in  England 
chiefly  by  its  third  chapter,  which  dealt  with  the 
Religious  Orders,  but  it  was,  in  fact,  a  great 
measure  of  liberation,  which  for  the  first  time  estab- 
lished complete  freedom  of  association  in  France  by 
making  it  lawful  to  combine  for  any  legal  purpose 
without  authorisation.  The  only  exceptions  were 
the  Religious  Orders,  for  which  authorisation 
remains  necessary.  The  methods  adopted  in  deal- 
ing with  the  Religious  Orders  may  be  open  to  ques- 
tion, but  there  can  be  no  doubt  as  to  the  necessity 
of  dealing  with  them  or  as  to  the  excellent  results 
of  the  law.  Institutions  of  the  character  of  Reli- 
gious Orders,  whose  members  have  surrendered 
their  individual  liberty,  are  tied  by  vows,  and  are 
under  absolutely  despotic  control,  so  that  they  can- 
not even  go  out  without  leave,  cannot  be  put  in  the 
same  category  as  ordinary  associations  and  at  least 
require  special  regulations.  It  is,  for  instance, 
contrary  to  public  policy  to  allow  very  young 
persons  to  take  life  vows  the  implications  of  which 
they  often  do  not  understand  or  to  allow  persons 
that  profess  to  have  left  the  world  to  superintend 
the  education  of  children  who  are  going  to  live  in 
it.  It  is  an  open  question  whether  people  have  the 
right  to  withdraw  themselves  from  all  the  duties  of 
citizenship ;  at  any  rate,  if  they  do  so,  they  cannot 
claim  to  exercise  its  rights.  The  mischief  of  the 


134         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

Religious  Orders  is  that  they  always  take  care  to 
keep  one  foot  in  this  world ;  if  they  wish  to  get  out 
of  it,  they  should  be  made  to  stay  out  of  it  entirely 
unless  and  until  they  wish  to  come  back  for  good. 
Periodical  inspection  of  all  conventual  establish- 
ments is  necessary  to  ensure  their  proper  adminis- 
tration and  to  prevent  abuses ;  at  every  inspection 
all  the  inmates  should  be  interviewed  in  private  by 
the  inspector.  It  is  untrue  that  people  are  never  kept 
in  conventual  establishments  against  their  will.  Even 
in  those  Religious  Orders  where  the  vows  are  only 
annual  and  the  members  have,  therefore,  the  right 
by  the  laws  of  the  Church  to  leave  at  the  expiration 
of  any  year,  they  are  often  taught  that  it  would  be 
a  sin  to  leave  and  great  moral  pressure  is  brought 
upon  them  if  they  wish  to  do  so.  A  friend  of  mine 
in  France  had  to  threaten  to  send  for  the  police 
before  he  could  succeed  in  getting  his  sister  out  of  a 
convent  which  she  wanted  to  leave,  although  she 
had  not  taken  life  vows  and  was  and  has  since 
remained  a  perfectly  good  Catholic.  There  seems 
to  be  no  reason  why  Religious  Orders  should  be 
allowed  to  hold  property;  since  they  profess  "  holy 
poverty,"  let  them  practise  it,  as  even  the  Fran- 
ciscans do  not  at  present,  although  St.  Francis  for- 
bade them  to  own  any  collective  property  and 
ordered  them  to  live  by  begging.  Legislation  based 
on  these  principles  would,  in  my  opinion,  have  been 
more  effective  than  the  provisions  of  the  Associa- 
tions Law.  Above  all,  Religious  Orders  should  be 
forbidden  to  accept  any  probationer  under  the  age 
of  thirty ;  that  would  soon  lead  to  the  disappearance 
of  most  of  them,  for  the  great  majority  continue  to 
exist  only  by  the  method  of  "  catching  'em  young." 
They  have  hitherto  obtained  most  of  their  recruits 
from  their  own  schools. 

Socialism  will  solve  the  problem  of  the  Religious 


DISCREDIT  OF  PARLIAMENT     135 

Orders,  most  of  which  would  not  survive  the  aboli- 
tion of  private  property  in  the  means  of  production, 
for  they  are  capitalist  organisations  living  on 
unearned  increment  and  performing  no  economic 
service  to  the  community.  Socialism  would  also  be 
the  most  effective  weapon  against  clerical  domina- 
tion, which  depends,  on  the  existence  of  ecclesiasti- 
cal property  under  the  control  of  the  clergy.  In  a 
Socialist  community  the  clergy  would  either  have 
to  work  for  their  living  like  other  people  or  else  be 
entirely  dependent  on  the  laity,  which  would  ulti- 
mately mean  their  control  by  the  laity.  This,  as  an 
eminent  Catholic  theologian  explained  to  me  many 
years  ago,  is  one  of  the  reasons  why  the  Church  is 
and  always  must  be  opposed  to  Socialism.  But  the 
French  Republic  had  to  deal  with  these  problems  in 
existing  social  conditions,  and,  although  it  has 
made  mistakes,  its  methods  have  been  fairly  satis- 
factory on  the  whole,  considering  the  difficulties 
with  which  it  had  to  contend.  It  is  untrue  that  the 
Church  in  France  is  or  ever  has  been  persecuted  by 
the  Republic ;  separation  gave  it  complete  freedom, 
and  the  State  does  not  interfere  with  it  in  any  way. 
The  Bishops  are  perhaps  less  free  than  they  were 
under  the  Concordat,  but,  if  that  be  so,  it  is  the 
fault  of  the  Vatican,  against  which  the  Concordat 
to  some  extent  protected  them.  If  it  has  not  been 
generally  understood  in  England  that  it  was  neces- 
sary to  destroy  clerical  domination  in  France,  that 
is  because  so  little  is  known  in  England  of  French 
history.  It  does  not  come  within  the  scope  of  this 
book  to  give  an  account  of  the  part  played  in  France 
in  the  nineteenth  century  by  the  Church  and  by  the 
"Congregation  "—the  Religious  Orders  and  the 
Jesuits  in  particular.  A  good  idea  of  it  will  be 
obtained  from  M.  Emile  Bourgeois's  "  History  of 
Modern  France,"  of  which  an  excellent  English 


136          MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

translation  has  been  published  in  the  Cambridge 
Historical  Series.  M.  Bourgeois  is  very  far  from 
being  a  vulgar  anti-clerical  of  the  Homais  type  and 
his  presentation  of  the  facts  is  scrupulously  impar- 
tial. I  do  not  mean  that  he  has  no  bias,  for  that 
would  be  absurd,  but  he  does  not  allow  it  to  make 
him  invent,  conceal,  or  distort  facts,  although  he 
sometimes  passes  judgment  on  them,  as  the  his- 
torian has  a  right  tc  do.  I  disagree  with  many  of 
his  judgments  and  his  political  point  of  view  is  not 
mine,  but  I  recognise  his  accuracy.1  The  facts— 
especially  the  history  of  the  reigns  of  Louis  XVIII, 
Charles  X,  and  Napoleon  III — will  make  anybody 
understand  why  Gambetta  said  :  "  Le  Clerical isme, 
voila  Pennemi !  f! 

Unfortunately,  since  the  law  for  the  separation  of 
Church  and  State  was  passed  in  December  1905, 
Parliament  has  become  more  and  more  impotent. 
No  reform  of  any  importance  has  been  carried  since 
that  date,  except  the  income  tax,  and  that,  as  has 
been  said,  was  emasculated  by  the  Senate.  This  is 
in  great  measure  due  to  the  break-up  of  the  Bloc — 
a  coalition  of  all  the  groups  of  the  Left,  including 
the  Socialists — with  the  support  of  which  Waldeck- 
Rousseau  came  into  power  in  1899.  The  Waldeck- 
Rousseau  and  Combes  Ministries,  whose  majority 
was  formed  by  the  Bloc,  were  unusually  long-lived 
for  Ministries  of  the  Third  Republic — each  of  them 
lasted  about  three  years.  It  was  during  those  six 
years  that  the  Associations  Law  and  the  ecclesiasti- 
cal legislation  were  passed,  thanks  to  the  cohesion 
of  the  Bloc.  At  the  general  election  of  1902  the 
Bloc  obtained  a  large  majority  in  the  country,  but 

1  This  appreciation  needs  to  be  qualified  as  regards  the  last 
forty  pages  of  the  book,  which  deal  with  events  after  1899. 
They  are  too  summary,  show  signs  of  having  been  hastily 
written  and  contain  several  mistakes  in  matters  of  fact. 


DISCREDIT  OF  PARLIAMENT     137 

it  fell  to  pieces  in  1906  as  a  result  of  M.  Clemen- 
ceau ?s  quarrel  with  the  Socialists,  due  to  his  hos- 
tility to  the  Labour  movement  and  his  bloody 
repression  of  strikes.  While  M.  Clemenceau  was 
Prime  Minister  from  1906  to  1909  he,  also  disinte- 
grated the  Radical  Party,  which  was  the  largest 
section  of  the  Bloc.  At  the  general  election  of  1906 
he  gave  his  support  to  candidates  calling  themselves 
Radicals,  who  were  as  conservative  as  Sir  Charles 
Dilke  declared  all  French  Radicals  to  be,  and,  as 
the  genuine  Radicals  became  more  and  more  dis- 
satisfied with  his  policy  and  joined  with  the  Social- 
ists against  him,  he  introduced  the  system  of  govern- 
ing with  shifting  majorities  composed  now  of  one 
combination,  now  of  another,  and  often  including 
the  Centre  and  even  the  Right.  M.  Briand>  who 
succeeded  M.  Clemenceau  as  Prime  Minister,  con- 
tinued this  method  and  completed  the  chaos.  His 
conduct  in  the  railway  strike  of  1910,  which  he 
suppressed  by  mobilising  the  railwaymen — a 
measure  of  doubtful  legality — further  widened  the 
breach  between  the  bourgeois  parties  and  the 
Socialists  and  Trade  Unionists,  which  has  never 
since  been  bridged  over;  all  subsequent  attempts 
to  reconstitute  the  Bloc  have  failed.  The  Chamber 
is  now  split  up  into  a  score  of  heterogeneous  groups, 
most  of  which  represent  interests  rather  than 
principles.  They  have  so  little  sense  or  meaning 
that  candidates  often  present  themselves  to  their 
constituencies  with  some  vague  label,  such  as 
"  Republican  of  the  Left,"  and  decide  only  after 
their  election  what  group  they  will  join.  Even  the 
Right,  small  as  it  is,  is  split  up  into  two  or  three 
groups  between  which  there  is  no  perceptible  differ- 
ence of  opinion  or  even  of  method,  and  it  would  pass 
the  wit  of  man  to  explain  the  differences  between 
the  groups  of  the  Left.  There  are,  for  instance, 


138         MY  SECOND   COUNTRY 

in  addition  to  the  Radical  Party,  two  groups 
calling  themselves  respectively  "  Group  of  the  Radi- 
cal Left"  and  "Group  of  Radical  and  Socialist- 
Radical  Republicans  ";  the  latter,  if  I  am  not  mis- 
taken, has  seventeen  members.  Four  parties  would 
be  enough  to  represent  all  the  polifical  tendencies 
in  France — the  Socialists,  the  bourgeois  Left,  the 
Centre  and  the  Right.1 

The  Radical  Party,  which  has  now  for  many 
years  been  the  largest  political  party  in  France, 
has  a  great  responsibility  for  this  chaotic  system 
and  for  the  discredit  into  which  Parliament  has 
fallen.  Had  it  taken  in  hand  long  ago  the  reform 
of  the  Constitution,  it  would  have  been  carried  by 
now  and  French  parliamentary  institutions  might 
be  in  a  healthier  condition.  But  the  Radical  Party 
is  no  more  homogeneous  than  the  other  political 
groups.  Its  sole  bond  of  union  was  anti-clericalism 
and  its  members  differ  widely  on  every  other  ques- 
tion, so  that,  since  the  settlement  of  the  ecclesiasti- 
cal problems,  it  has  been  divided  and  impotent. 
An  advanced  section  of  the  party  calling  themselves 
Socialist-Radicals  ("  Radicaux-Socialistes  ")  made 
an  effort  to  promote  social  reforms,  but  never 
carried  the  bulk  of  the  party  with  them,  and  they 
themselves  are  now  as  divided  as  the  rest. 
Even  the  income  tax  was,  as  I  have  already  said, 
opposed  by  the  Senate,  in  which  there  was  a 
large  Radical  majority,  and  took  years  to  pass. 

1  The  Radicals,  the  so-called  *'  Socialist  Republicans "  or 
Independent  Socialists,  and  the  other  groups  of  the  bourgeois 
Left,  answer  more  or  less  to  the  English  Liberal  Party,  but  two 
thirds  of  their  members  are  at  least  as  conservative  as  most 
English  Tories.  The  groups  of  the  Centre,  of  which  the  Alliance 
D6mocratique  is  the  most  important,  represent  Republican  con- 
servative opinion  and  in  most  regards  are  about  where  the 
English  Tory  party  was  half  a  century  ago.  The  Right  is  com- 
posed of  actual  reactionaries — the  Catholic  Party,  the  rump  of 
the  old  Royalists  and  the  Nationalists  (ex-Bonapartists  and 
ex-Boulangists) . 


DISCREDIT   OF  PARLIAMENT  139 

Yet  the  old  system  of  direct  taxation  in  France  was 
as  lenient  to  the  rich  as  it  was  oppressive  to  the 
poor;  being  levied,  not  on  the  income  of  the  tax- 
payer, but  on  the  amount  of  -his  rent,  it  bore  no 
relation  to  his  taxable  capacity.  M.  Caillaux, 
the  author  of  the  Income  Tax  Bill,  instanced  in  one 
of  his  speeches  in  the  Chamber  the  case  of  a  house 
at  Marseilles  where  the  tenant  of  a  shop  on  the 
street  making  about  £400  a  year  profit  paid  more 
in  taxation  than  a  financial  company  earning  large 
profits,  which  had  an  office  on  an  upper  floor  in  the 
same  house.  Moreover,  a  man  earning  his  liveli- 
hood by  the  exercise  of  a  trade  or  profession  had  to 
pay  an  extra  tax  called  the  patente  levied  on  the 
rent  both  of  his  business  premises  and  of  his  private 
residence,  with  the  result  that  earned  incomes  were 
taxed  about  three  times  as  heavily  as  unearned 
ones.  Such  was  the  system  defended  by  many  poli- 
ticians calling  themselves  Radicals  because  it  suited 
the  petits  rentiers  whose  votes  they  wanted.  Even 
when  the  income  tax  at  last  became  law,  persons 
engaged  in  agriculture  were  exempted  from  it ;  this 
scandalous  injustice  is  only  an  example  of  the  way 
in  which  the  urban  populations  have  been  and  are 
persistently  sacrificed  for  electioneering  reasons. 
The  exemption  could  not  have  been  carried  without 
the  support  of  Radicals,  for  the  Radicals  and  Social- 
ists together  had  a  majority  in  the  Chamber  which 
agreed  to  it.  The  Radical  Party  is  now  almost 
entirely  a  "  country  party,"  dependent  on  the  rural 
districts  and  small  towns.  The  large  towns  have 
been  captured  by  the  Socialists.  The  exemption  of 
nearly  half  the  population  of  France  has,  of  course, 
enormously  diminished  the  yield  of  the  income  tax, 
which,  moreover,  is  not  properly  applied  except  to 
the  salaried  classes,  whose  incomes  can  be  easily 
ascertained.  The  declarations  of  the  rich  are  ac- 
cepted without  question.  The  whole  working  of  the 


140         MY  SECOND   COUNTRY 

French  financial  and  administrative  system  tends  to 
favour  the  rich  at  the  expense  of  the  poor  to  an 
even  greater  extent  than  in  most  other  countries. 
France  is  the  paradise  of  the  rentier — the  man 
living  on  unearned  income  derived  from  rent  or  in- 
terest; and  the  Radicals,  the  most  advanced  poli- 
ticians of  the  bourgeoisie,  have  done  nothing  to 
alter  this. 

One  of  the  reasons  of  the  decadence  of  the  Radical 
Party  is  that  it  has  never  had  the  courage  to  be 
in  opposition.  It  has  always  compromised 
rather  than  lose  any  of  its  members.  Individual 
Radicals  take  office  without  consulting  the  party  or 
even  in  defiance  of  its  decisions  and  the  party 
tolerates  their  conduct.  In  the'  present  Chamber  the 
Radicals,  the  Socialists  and  the  "  Socialist  Repub- 
licans," who  are  merely  Radicals  under  another 
name,  have  together  a  clear  majority.  After  M. 
Painleve's  resignation  in  November  1917,  they  all 
decided,  rightly  or  wrongly,  to  refuse  their  co- 
operation or  support  to  a  Ministry  presided  over  by 
M.  Clemenceau.  Nevertheless,  when  M.  Clemen- 
ceau  formed  his  Cabinet,  Radicals  and  Independent 
Socialists  accepted  office  in  it  and  their  respective 
groups  acquiesced  in  their  indiscipline.  Political 
parties  that  act  in  this  way  stultify  themselves ; 
in  fact  since  that  date  the  Radical  Party  has  fallen 
into  a  state  of  abject  servility  and  is  now  completely 
discredited.  Had  the  party  had  the  courage  to 
enforce  party  discipline,  to  decide  as  a  party 
whether  or  not  it  would  participate  in  a  particular 
Ministry  and  to  expel  any  of  its  members  that 
joined  a  Ministry  without  its  permission,  it  might 
now  be  reduced  in  numbers,  but  it  would  not  be 
reduced  to  impotence. 

Nothing  has  done  more  to  undermine  the  power 
of  the  bourgeoisie  than  the  incompetence  and 


DISCREDIT  OF  PARLIAMENT    141 

helplessness  of  the  Radicals,  which  have  convinced 
the  proletariat  that  there  is  nothing  to  be  hoped  for 
from  any  bourgeois  party.  The  failure  of  the  Radi- 
cals has  left  the  Socialist  Party  as  the  only  effective 
political  organisation  of  the  Left.  Although  it  is 
only  one-sixth  of  the  Chamber,  whereas  the  Radical 
Party  is  nearly  one-third,  the  Socialist  Party  has  an 
influence  out  of  all  proportion  to  its  numbers,  due 
to  the  fact  that  it  is  the  only  organised  political 
party  in  France,  the  only  party  that  has  any  dis- 
cipline or  any  conception  of  corporate  action.  The 
very  nature  of  a  party  does  not  seem  to  be  gene- 
rally understood  in  France,  where  one  often  hears 
that  it  is  intolerant  to  expel  a  man  from  a  party 
even  if  he  is  continually  speaking  and  voting  against 
it.  This  shows  a  misapprehension  of  the  nature  and 
scope  of  tolerance.  We  ought  to  tolerate  any 
opinion  in  the  nation,  since  the  alternative  is  to  give 
those  who  hold  certain  opinions  the  choice  between 
keeping  silence  and  leaving  the  country,  but  the 
toleration  of  any  opinion  in  a  party  is  an  absurdity. 
A  party  exists  for  the  purpose  of  promoting  certain 
opinions,  and  unless  its  members  agree  on  all  im- 
portant questions  of  principle  it  ceases  to  be  a 
party.  If  a  man  be  expelled  from  a  party  he  can 
go  on  expressing  his  opinions  outside  it  and  suffers 
no  injury.  The  Socialist  Party  seems  to  be  the  only 
one  in  France  that  recognises  these  truisms.  In 
the  midst  of  political  chaos  and  incoherence  it  alone 
stands  for  something  definite. 

The  system  of  party  government  is  often  criti- 
cised in  England  and  is  no  doubt  open  to  criticism ; 
but  those  who  are  inclined  to  condemn  it  altogether 
should  first  pause  and  look  at  France.  There  the 
absence  of  any  party  system  has  made  personal 
considerations  take  precedence  of  political :  that 
is  one  of  the  causes  of  the  decadence  of 


142         MY  SECOND   COUNTRY 

Parliament.  No  group  ever  has  a  majority  in  the 
Chamber,  so  that  a  homogeneous  Ministry  is  im- 
possible.1 Before  the  war  Ministries  had  for  fifteen 
years  been  composed  of  representatives  of  all  the 
groups  of  the  Left,  except  the  Socialists,  who  refused 
to  be  included.  This  system,  itself  the  result  of 
the  multiplicity  of  groups,  led  to  their  further  mul- 
tiplication. The  reason  why  there  are  so  many 
groups  is  that  a  Deputy  whose  qualifications  would 
never  give  him  a  chance  of  office  if  he  belonged  to 
a  large  party  becomes  "  ministrable  "  by  forming 
a  small  group  and  thus  commanding  a  score  of 
votes.  But  the  Ministries  are  coalitions,  not  of 
groups,  but  of  individuals.  As  in  the  Radical  Party, 
so  in  the  other  groups,  Deputies  do  not  consult 
their  colleagues  as  a  rule  before  accepting  an  invi- 
tation to  join  a  Ministry,  or,  if  they  consult  them, 
do  not  follow  their  advice  if  it  be  unfavourable. 
When  a  Ministry  resigns,  half  its  members  usually 
join  its  successor,  and  it  is  quite  common  for  a 
defeated  Prime  Minister  to  be  succeeded  by  one  of 
his  own  colleagues.  The  possibilities  for  intrigue 
afforded  by  this  system  are  obvious ;  they  are  fully 
exploited.  During  the  war  only  one  Ministry— 
that  of  M.  Painleve — was  defeated  in  the  Chamber ; 
the  others  were  gradually  undermined  by  sub- 
terranean intrigues  against  them  conducted  in  the 
lobbies  by  some  of  their  own  members.  Each  suc- 
cessive Prime  Minister  during  the  war,  except  M. 
Clemenceau,  had  been  a  member  of  the  preceding 
Cabinet.  The  "  sacred  union "  or  party  truce 
during  the  war  made  things  worse  than  ever  by 

1  A  homogeneous  Administration  would  not  be  necessary, 
if  Ministers  were  separately  and  individually  responsible  to  Parlia- 
ment and  Cabinet  government  were  abolished.  But  so  long 
as  ministerial  solidarity  and  Cabinet  government  exist  serious 
differences  of  opinion  in  the  Cabinet  paralyse  its  action. 


DISCREDIT  OF  PARLIAMENT    143 

increasing  the  number  of  Deputies  eligible  for  office. 
When  Ministries  included  Socialists,  Deputies  of 
the  Centre  and  even  of  the  Right,  politics  became 
merely  a  scramble  for  office  and  personal  rivalries 
entirely  took  the  place  of  political.  So  long 
as  the  majority  of  French  parliamentarians 
remain  unable  to  resist  the  temptation  of  a  port- 
folio, French  politics  will  remain  in  a  state  of 
incoherence. 

A  terrible  weakness  of  French  parliamentarians — 
and  it  is  not  restricted  to  France — is  the  fear  of 
responsibility.  During  the  war  the  majority  -of  the 
Deputies  grumbled  against  every  Government  in 
the  lobbies,  but  only  once  had  the  courage  to  vote 
against  a  Government  in  the  Chamber.  They  com- 
plained that  the  President  of  the  Republic  chose 
Prime  Ministers  without  regard  to  the  wishes  of  the 
Chamber  and  accused  him  of  exercising  personal 
power,  but  they  had  only  themselves  to  blame. 
Until  November  1917  the  President  had  no  indica- 
tion of  the  wishes  of  the  Chamber  to  guide  him  in 
the  choice  of  a  Prime  Minister,  and  could  but  follow 
his  own  judgment;  and  when,  in  November  1917, 
he  did  in  fact  appoint  a  Prime  Minister  in  opposi- 
tion to  the  expressed  wishes  of  a  majority  of  the 
Chamber,  the  Chamber  acquiesced  in  his  choice. 
A  Parliament  which  abdicates  in  this  way  has  no 
right  to  complain  if  advantage  be  taken  of  its 
docility.  There  seems  to  be  something  demoralis- 
ing in  the  atmosphere  of  a  Parliament  which  pro- 
duces a  lack  of  moral  courage  and  a  fear  of  responsi- 
bility. How  often  has  one  heard  a  Minister  say 
that  he  was  not  responsible  for  a  particular  policy 
because  he  disapproved  of  it  and  was  overruled  by 
his  colleagues ;  it  never  seemed  to  have  occurred  to 
him  that  he  could  always  have  resigned  and  that 
he  ought  to  have  done  so  if  the  matter  concerned 


144          MY  SECOND  COUNTRY 

was  one  of  vital  importance.  Members  of  Parlia- 
ment are  disposed  to  think  too  much  of  parliamen- 
tary combinations  and  parliamentary  opinion  and 
too  little  of  the  country ;  they  become  entangled  in 
the  parliamentary  machine.  The  French  Chamber 
became,  during  the  war,  hopelessly  out  of  touch 
with  the  country.  On  the  other  hand,  it  lived  in 
terror  of  the  "  Great  Press"— the  big  Parisian 
morning  papers  which  never  really  represent  French 
opinion,  and  did  so  less  than  ever  during  the  war. 
By  means  of  the  censorship  the  Government  of  the 
day  got  the  Press  under  its  control  and  used  it  to 
intimidate  Parliament ;  it  was  a  system  of  govern- 
ment by  the  Press,  perhaps  the  worst  system  of 
government  that  could  be  devised.  The  contempt 
into  which  the  present  Chamber  has  fallen  through 
its  cowardice  has  reacted  on  parliamentary  institu- 
tions as  such  and  enormously  increased  anti-par- 
liamentarism of  both  kinds. 

Another  cause — perhaps  the  most  important  of 
all — of  the  decline  of  parliamentarism  in  France  is 
the  corruption  which  permeates  politics.  The 
French  themselves  exaggerate  the  extent  of  cor- 
ruption ;  to  hear  most  Frenchmen  talk,  one  would 
imagine  that  there  was  not  a  single  honest  politi- 
cian— that  every  man  of  them  had  his  price.  But 
the  French  are  disposed  to  attribute  interested 
motives  to  everybody  and  to  doubt  the  possibility 
of  disinterested  conduct — especially  in  the  case  of 
people  of  whose  conduct  they  disapprove.  They 
usually  assume  that  their  political  opponents  are 
paid  by  somebody  or  are  making  money  somehow 
out  of  their  nefarious  political  policy.  Thus,  M. 
Clemenceau  was  for  several  years  believed  by  the 
great  majority  of  the  French  people  to  be  the  paid 
agent  of  England  simply  because  he  did  not  share 
the  Anglophobia  which  was  then  in  fashion.  So 


DISCREDIT  OF  PARLIAMENT     145 

strong  was  this  conviction,  even  in  official  quarters, 
that  when  M.  Clemenceau  visited  England  during 
the  premiership  of  Waldeck-Rousseau,  the  latter 
had  him  followed  everywhere  by  agents  of  the 
French  Secret  Police.  A  similar  legend  firmly 
believed  by  the  majority  of  the  bourgeoisie  made 
Jaures  a  millionaire ;  it  was  finally  discredited  only 
after  his  death,  when  it  was  found  that  he  had  left 
his  family  almost  unprovided  for,  his  total  fortune 
amounting  to  £300  or  £400.  This  tendency  to  im- 
pute interested  motives  indiscriminately  has  a 
certain  affinity  with  the  inclination  to  discover 
traitors  everywhere.  Its  origin  is  perhaps  partly  a 
certain  intolerance  due  to  vanity,  which  makes 
people  think  that  nobody  can  differ  from  them  in 
good  faith ;  partly  an  inordinate  respect  for  money, 
which  leads  to  the  belief  that  nobody  can  resist  the 
temptation  to  acquire  it. 

Although  French  politicians  are  less  corrupt  than 
many  people  in  France  represent  them  to  be, 
although  there  are  many  whose  motives  are  quite 
disinterested  and  whose  conduct  is  perfectly  clean, 
nevertheless  there  is  too  much  corruption  in  France 
—more  than  there  is  in  England.  I  am  not  so 
foolish  as  to  suppose  that  English  politics  are  free 
from  corruption;  they  never  have  been  and  they 
have  been  less  so  than  ever  during  the  war.  Nor 
must  one  ignore  the  fact  that  corruption,  like 
everything  else,  is  more  open  in  France  than  in 
England.  We  are  strongly  averse  from  washing  our 
dirty  linen  in  public ;  the  French  seem  rather  to  like 
it  than  otherwise.  Scandals  are  hushed  up  in  Eng- 
land, they  are  exposed  in  France;  for  this  reason 
England  always  appears  better  than  it  is  and  France 
worse.  This  applies  to  the  whole  of  life  :  the  French 
like  to  recognise  facts ;  we  do  not — that  is  what  the 
French  really  mean  when  they  call  us  hypocritical. 

L 


146         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

Yet,  when  all  these  considerations  have  been  taken 
into  account,  it  still  remains  true  that  corruption  is 
particularly  prevalent  in  France.  Even  the  ex- 
posure of  scandals  does  not  check  it,  for  French  poli- 
ticians survive  scandals  which  in  England  would 
put  an  end  to  their  political  career.  I  mean  real 
scandals.  Nobody  in  France  regards  the  fact  that  a 
man  has  been  divorced  as  a  scandal,  and  the  sug- 
gestion that  it  would  make  him  unfit  to  sit  in  Par- 
liament would  be  received  with  universal  derision. 
The  French  properly  regard  an  incident  of  that  kind 
as  a  private  affair  which  does  not  concern  anybody 
but  the  person  himself.  But  there  are  men  still 
occupying  a  prominent  position  in  French  politics 
in  spite  of  the  fact  that  they  were  implicated  in  the 
Panama  affair  or  some  other  financial  scandal  of 
the  same  kind.  The  reason  is  simple  :  there  is  so 
profound  and  general  a  conviction  in  France  that 
all  politicians  are  corrupt  that,  when  corruption 
is  proved  against  an  individual  politician,  it  is  taken 
almost  as  a  matter  of  course ;  it  is  just  what  people 
expected,  and  they  simply  shrug  their  shoulders. 
For  the  same  reason,  it  often  happens  that  a  repu- 
tation for  corruption  is  totally  undeserved  and  that 
the  politicians  most  generally  suspected  of  having 
made  money  out  of  politics  are  precisely  those 
whose  careers  have  been  perfectly  clean.  There  is  a 
certain  French  politician  who,  although  he  has  never 
been  Prime  Minister  and  is  not  in  the  first  rank, 
has  been  a  member  of  several  Ministries,  who,  for 
some  unknown  reason,  is  generally  reputed  to  have 
made  money  out  of  politics  throughout  his  career. 
He  Has  that  reputation  even  on  his  own  side  in  poli- 
tics and  the  chances  are  that,  If  one  asked  for  an 
example  of  a  corrupt  politician,  his  name  would  be 
the  first  given  by  nine  out  of  every  ten  Frenchmen. 
Yet  I  am  convinced  that  he  is  one  of  the  most 


DISCREDIT  OF  PARLIAMENT    147 

honest  men  in  French  politics  and  that  his  reputa- 
tion is  wholly  undeserved ;  for,  as  one  of  his  most 
intimate  friends  remarked  to  me,  he  lives  in  quite 
a  modest  way,  spends  very  little  money,  and  yet  he 
never  has  a  sou  to  spare.  Such  mistakes  as  these 
are  the  inevitable  result  of  indiscriminating  sus- 
picion; people  that  suspect  everybody  invariably 
become  incapable  of  recognising  an  honest  man 
when  they  see  one,  and  end  in  being  taken  in  by 
the  rogues.  That  is  very  much  the  case  of  the 
French  people  in  regard  to  their  politicians;  some 
of  those  in  whom  they  have  had  the  most  confidence 
have  deserved  it  the  least. 

Love  of  money  is  one  of  the  chief  weaknesses  of 
the  French,  at  least  of  the  bourgeois  and  the 
peasants,  for  the  workmen  on  the  whole  are  free 
from  it ;  it  accounts,  no  doubt,  in  part  for  the  preva- 
lence of  corruption  in  its  grosser  and  more  obvious 
form — the  fonder  people  are  of  money  the  more 
they  will  inevitably  be  tempted  by  it.  But  I  do 
not  think  that  this  is  the  chief  cause.  There  is  more 
corruption  in  France  than  in  England  because 
there  are  more  opportunities  for  it — it  is  the  inevit- 
able result  of  the  administrative  and  political  sys- 
tem. Such  a  system  would  produce  corruption  in 
any  country  and  among  any  people.  The  enormous 
amount  of  patronage  which  it  puts  in  the  hands  of 
Ministers  would  lead  to  abuses  anywhere.  It  causes 
the  Government  to  be  regarded  primarily  as  a  dis- 
penser of  favours  which  are  to  be  obtained  by  in- 
fluence and  interest — by  the  use  of  a  piston,  as  the 
slang  phrase  goes.  The  English  Civil  Service  was 
corrupt  a  century  ago  when  vacancies  in  it  were 
filled  by  nomination ;  it  was  the  introduction  of 
open  competition  that  put  an  end  to  corruption. 
In  France  the  system  of  nomination  still  exists  and 
produces  the  results  that  it  formerly  produced  in 

L  2 


148          MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

England.  Although  French  Civil  servants  are  very 
badly  paid,  the  majority  of  French  bourgeois 
parents  prefer  a  post  in  the  Civil  Service  for  their 
sons  to  a  trade  or  profession ;  the  great  ambition  of 
a  large  proportion  of  Frenchmen  is  to  be  a  Govern- 
ment official.  The  number  of  Government  officials 
is  enormous  :  the  Customs,  the  Octroi,  the  innumer- 
able forms  of  petty  indirect  taxation,  some  of 
which  are  hardly  worth  the  expense  of  collection, 
help  to  make  it  so.  French  administration  would 
be  much  more  efficient  if  the  number  of  Govern- 
ment officials  were  reduced  by  half  and  their 
salaries  doubled,  provided  that  open  competition 
were  substituted  for  nomination,  but  no  Minister 
will  ever  propose  a  change  which  would  reduce  the 
number  of  places  at  his  disposal.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  really  important  public  services  are 
often  understaffed ;  that  is  the  case  of  the  postal 
service. 

The  State  monopolies  add  to  the  patronage  at  the 
disposal  of  Ministers;  there  are  appointments  in 
tobacco  and  match  factories,  and  there  are  above 
all  the  bureaux  de  tabac — the  official  tobacco 
shops,  which  have  the  monopoly  of  selling  tobacco 
retail.1  Just  as  in  England  we  are  stupid 
enough  to  give  away  to  individuals  the  right 
to  sell  drink  and  thus  present  them  gratui- 
tously with  a  valuable  monopoly,  so  in  France  thr 
right  to  sell  tobacco  retail  is  conferred  as  a  favour. 
Since  no  training  or  qualifications  are  required  for 
it,  it  is  eagerly  sought  after  and  gives  the  largest 
opportunity  for  abuse.  The  most  cynical  Minister 
would  not  dare  to  give  a  post  in  a  Government  office 
to  a  totally  illiterate  person,  but  anybody  is  com- 
petent to  run  a  tobacco  shop ;  the  prices  of  all 
his  stock  are  fixed  for  him  in  advance,  and  he  has 

1  For  the  working  of  the  State  monopolies  see  Chapter  VII. 


DISCREDIT  OF  PARLIAMENT    149 

merely  to  hand  over  the  counter  the  tobacco, 
cigars,  or  cigarettes  asked  for  and  take  the  money. 
Theoretically  a  tobacco  shop  is  supposed  to  be  a 
reward  for  services  of  some  kind  to  the  State,  and 
in  fact  it  is  sometimes  given  to  an  incapacitated 
officer,  non-commissioned  officer  or  Government 
servant,  or  to  his  widow.  But  it  would  be  far  more 
profitable  to  the  State  to  deal  with  such  cases  by 
adequate  pensions  and  put  up  to  auction  the  right 
to  sell  tobacco  either  for  a  term  of  years  or  for  life ; 
since  the  number  of  tobacco  shops  is  limited  in 
proportion  to  the  population,  a  large  revenue  would 
be  obtained  by  that  method.  There  is  a  certain 
tobacco  shop  in  Paris  which  is  sublet  by  its  legal 
holder,  who  obtains  for  it  a  rent  of  about  £3,000 
a  year ;  for  there  is  nothing  to  prevent  the  holders 
of  the  agencies  from  farming  them  out,  and  those 
that  consider  it  beneath  their  social  position  to  run 
them  themselves  always  take  that  course.  It  need 
hardly  be  said  that  in  awarding  tobacco  shops 
Ministers  put  a  very  wide  and  generous  interpreta- 
tion on  the  term  "  public  services,"  which  often 
mean  political  services  to  a  particular  Senator  or 
Deputy  or  to  the  Minister  himself,  or  even  near 
relationship  to  one  of  his  friends.  In  this  regard 
the  Third  Republic  has  continued  the  traditions  of 
the  and  en  regime ;  the  King  was  the  fountain  of 
honour  and  also  of  profit,  and  so  is  the  Govern- 
ment of  the  Third  Republic.  It  is  true  that  the 
Ministers  of  the  Republic  cannot  confer  titles,  but 
they  have  plenty  of  decorations  to  give  away,  and 
I  am  not  sure  that  a  decoration  in  France  does  not 
give  more  pleasure  to  its  recipient  than  a  title  in 
England.  Certainly  decorations  are  even  more 
sought  after  in  France  than  titles  in  England,  for 
there  are  more  of  them,  and  the  number  of  people 
Ihat  can  hope  to  get  one  is  much  larger ;  that  is  one 


150         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

of  the  advantages  of  democracy.  It  must  be 
remembered  that  the  holder  of  a  French  decoration 
has  the  right  to  wear  in  his  buttonhole  a  ribbon  or 
rosette  indicating  that  he  possesses  it.  This  prob- 
ably gives  a  more  constant  satisfaction  than  the 
possession  of  a  title,  for  if  a  man  enters  a  restaurant 
or  a  railway  carriage  no  stranger  knows  whether 
he  is  a  peer  or  a  commoner,  whereas,  if  he  should 
happen  to  be  an  officer  of  the  Legion  of  Honour, 
everybody  in  the  place  knows  it  by  his  red  rosette. 
This  is  no  doubt  the  reason  why  so  much 
energy  and  even  intrigue  are  devoted  to  pro- 
curing such  humble  decorations  as  the  Palmes 
Academiques,  the  Merite  Agricole,  or  the  Dragon  of 
Annam ;  the  subject  is  a  perennial  one  for  the 
French  humorists. 

Since  Ministers  are  but  mortals,  nepotism  and 
favouritism  are  the  natural  results  of  a  system  in 
which  everything  goes  by  favour  and  the  French 
administration  becomes  a  vast  engine  of  corruption. 
Places  are  given,  to  please  friends  or  ccnciliate 
enemies,  to  reward  political  supporters  or  win  over 
political  opponents,  to  recompense  personal  services 
or  to  get  rid  of  importunate  suitors.  An  unfortunate 
Minister,  pestered  with  applications  of  every  kind 
from  every  side,  will  sometimes  yield  to  importunity 
what  he  might  refuse  to  the  claims  of  friendship. 
For  the  requests  that  pour  in  on  him  are  not  all  ap- 
plications for  appointments.  Every  morning  his 
secretaries  have  to  wade  through  a  mass  of  corre- 
spondence asking  for  favours  of  every  description — 
usually  more  or  less  illegal :  for  a  hint  to  the  conseil 
de  revision  (recruiting  tribunal)  that  a  particular 
young  gentleman  is  inapt  for  military  service,  for 
a  hint  to  the  Public  Prosecutor  or  a  juge  d' 'instruc- 
tion that  the  case  against  a  particular  person  has 
nothing  in  it,  for  exemption  from  this,  that,  or  the 


DISCREDIT  OF  PARLIAMENT    151 

other  legal  obligation.  There  are  not  many  things 
that  influential  connections  cannot  do  in  France; 
when  the  French  say  of  a  man  "  il  a  de  belles 
relations,"  one  knows  that  he  is  more  likely  to  get 
on  than  if  he  were  merely  able  or  industrious.  The 
French  judicial  system  is  mediaeval :  the  French 
system  of  administration  is  almost  oriental  in  the 
arbitrary  powers  that  it  gives  to  Ministers  and  the 
way  in  which  influence  counts.  It  is  a  common- 
place in  France  that  laws  are  never  permanently 
enforced.  That  is  an  exaggerated  statement,  like 
many  others  that  the  French  make  about  them- 
selves, but  it  is  partially  true ;  as  a  French  writer 
once  said,  there  are  too  many  laws  in  France  for 
there  to  be  any  law.  Since  most  laws  are  bad  in 
all  countries,  the  failure  to  enforce  them  has  some- 
times its  advantages;  but,  unfortunately,  in  prac- 
tice it  is  usually  only  influential  people  who  escape 
the  law,  which  is  enforced  against  those  who  have 
no  influence. 

What,  after  all,  is  an  unfortunate  Minister  to  do 
with  all  the  patronage  at  his  disposal  ?  With  the 
best  intentions  in  the  world  he  could  not  possibly 
find  the  most  suitable  person  for  every  appointment 
that  he  has  to  make  :  how,  for  instance,  can  he 
possibly  decide  between  the  various  candidates  for 
a  tobacco  agency  in  a  remote  provincial  town  ? 
He  must  depend  on  recommendations,  and  very 
naturally,  as  any  one  of  us  would  in  the  same  cir- 
cumstances, he  prefers  the  recommendations  of 
people  that  he  knows.  It  is  equally  natural  that 
he  should  be  ready  to  give  a  particularly  favourable 
hearing  to  his  parliamentary  colleagues  and  sup- 
porters. So  it  comes  about  that  one  of  the  chief 
functions  of  a  French  Senator  or  Deputy  is  to  be 
the  channel  through  which  Ministerial  favours  flow, 
and  one  of  his  chief  preoccupations  is  to  secure  a 


152          MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

fair  share  of  those  favours  for  his  own  constituents. 
The  amount  of  correspondence  with  which  a  French 
Deputy  has  to  deal  is  incredible.  Every  day  he 
receives  a  huge  batch  of  letters  from  constituents 
asking  for  some  service  and  his  re-election  may  de- 
pend on  the  way  in  which  he  answers  them.  Nor  are 
his  constituents  content  with  writing  :  if  the  impor- 
tance of  the  matter  warrants  it,  or  even  if  it  does 
not,  supposing  that  the  constituency  is  in  Paris  or 
within  an  easy  distance,  they  call  upon  him  at  the 
Chamber.  Much  of  a  Deputy's  time  is  taken  up  in 
answering  letters  or  receiving  visits ;  some  Deputies 
refuse  to  do  either,  but  the  refusal  may  easily  cost 
them  their  seats.  If  a  Deputy  has  also  a  profession 
or  a  business,  he  has  very  little  time  left  for  his 
real  parliamentary  duties ;  that  is,  perhaps,  one  of 
the  reasons  why  the  Chamber  often  does  not  give  to 
important  matters  the  serious  attention  that  they 
deserve.  It  must  not  be  supposed  that  all  Depu- 
ties like  this  system ;  on  the  contrary,  it  is  probable 
that  the  majority  of  them  would  be  glad  to  be 
relieved  from  the  burden  of  satisfying  the  demands 
for  places  and  favours,  and  I  have  known  men  who 
have  abandoned  political  life  in  disgust  at  it.  After 
all,  the  task  is  an  ungrateful  one ;  for  every  person 
that  a  Deputy  satisfies  by  getting  him  a  place  he 
offends  fifty  who  wanted  it  and  did  not  get  it.  The 
system  vitiates  the  whole  political  atmosphere ; 
electors  often  vote  for  a  Deputy  less  for  his  political 
principles  and  programme  than  for  what  they  hope 
to  get  out  of  him  through  his  relations  with  those 
in  power.  It  is  a  high  tribute  to  the  independence 
and  public  spirit  of  the  French  proletariat  that  the 
Socialists,  who  are,  of  course,  the  worst  possible 
Deputies  to  get  anything  out  of,  have  so  large  a 
representation  in  the  Chamber.  It  is  naturally  in 
the  rural  districts,  where  the  Deputies  come  into 


DISCREDIT  OF  PARLIAMENT    153 

much  closer  individual  contact  with  their  constitu- 
ents, that  self-interest  enters  most  into  an  election. 
To  the  Deputies  themselves  the  system  that  makes 
them  channels  for  the  distribution  of  favours  is 
demoralising.  They  know  that  their  re-election 
depends  more  on  the  favours  that  they  can  obtain 
for  their  constituents  than  on  their  action  in  Par- 
liament— that  a  liberal  distribution  of  places  and 
decorations  covers  a  multitude  of  political  sins. 
Nor  is  it  only  individual  favours  that  they  can 
obtain  for  their  constituents.  The  powerlessness  of 
the  local  authorities  and  the  necessity  of  obtaining 
the  authorisation  of  the  Government  for  every  local 
improvement  gives  further  opportunities  for  the 
exercise  of  the  Deputy's  influence.  A  rural  district 
has  often  had  to  wait  for  years  for  a  new  bridge 
or  a  new  road  that  was  badly  needed  merely  because 
its  Deputy  was  unfavourably  regarded  by  the 
Government.  On  the  principle  of  "  do  ut  des,"  the 
Government  uses  the  favours  which  it  grants  to 
Senators  and  Deputies  as  a  means  of  bringing 
pressure  on  them ;  to  oppose  the  Government  is  to 
lose  one's  chance  of  being  useful  to  one's  con- 
stituency and  therefore  to  damage  one's  chance  of 
re-election.  One  means  of  influencing  members  of 
Parliament  is  fortunately  forbidden  by  law :  it  is 
illegal  for  a  Senator  or  Deputy  to  be  given  a  decora- 
tion. But  this  prohibition  was  suspended  by 
Parliament  early  in  the  war  on  the  pretext  of 
decorating  Deputies  on  active  service  for  their 
military  exploits.  Immediately  a  shower  of  decora- 
tions descended  on  the  Chamber,  and  every 
Deputy  that  had  served  in  a  provincial  Intendance 
or  found  the  slightest  excuse  for  putting  on  a 
uniform  appeared  with  the  Legion  of  Honour  in 
his  buttonhole,  provided,  of  course,  that  he  was  a 
faithful  supporter  of  the  Government. 


154         MY  SECOND   COUNTRY 

There  are,  however,  corrupting  and  demoralising 
influences  in  Parliament  even  more  important  than 
those  that  have  been  mentioned,  and  even  more 
serious  in  their  effects.  They  are  not  peculiar  to 
France,  for  they  are  the  necessary  outcome  of  ex- 
isting social  conditions,  but  they  are  perhaps  more 
obvious  in  France  than  elsewhere.  The  Socialist 
workman  who  doubts  whether  Socialism  will  ever 
triumph  by  Parliamentary  methods  has  one  cogent 
and,  to  my  mind,  almost  unanswerable  argument : 
the  effect  of  a  capitalist  Parliament  on  its  members, 
and  in  particular  on  Socialist  and  Labour  represen- 
tatives. Intense  bitterness  has  been  caused  in  the 
French  proletariat  by  the  way  in  which  certain 
politicians  of  great  ability  have  used  Socialism  as 
a  ladder  by  which  to  climb  into  eminence,  only 
to  kick  it  down  when  it  has  served  its  purpose. 
From  the  point  of  view  of  self-interest  it  is  an 
obvious  disadvantage  to  an  able  man  to  be  a 
Socialist,  for  it  means  that  he  can  never  hope  to 
hold  office  and  that  the  prizes  of  politics  are  denied 
to  him.  All  men  are  not  so  disinterested  as  Jaures, 
who  would  have  been  Prime  Minister  of  France 
years  before  his  death  had  he  remained  what  he 
was  at  the  beginning  of  his  career — a  Republican 
of  the  Left  Centre — or  even  if  his  evolution  towards 
the  Left  had  stopped  short  at  Radicalism. 
M.  Millerand,  M.  Briand,  and  M.  Viviani  were  all 
Socialists  and  all  abandoned  Socialism  to  become 
Ministers.  M.  Briand  had  been  in  Parliament  only 
four  years  when  he  became  Minister  of  Public  In- 
struction and  Public  Worship  in  M.  Clemenceau's 
first  Cabinet,  and  he  was  suppressing  a  railway 
strike  amid  the  applause  of  all  the  capitalists  and 
reactionaries  in  France  only  five  or  six  years  after 
his  violent  advocacy  of  the  general  strike  as  a  revo- 
lutionary method.  I  cannot  assert  that  MM. 


DISCREDIT  OF  PARLIAMENT    155 

Millerand,  Briand,  and  Viviani  were  insincere  or 
influenced  solely  by  self-interest — that  is  a  matter 
for  their  own  consciences — but  undoubtedly  a  con- 
version that  is  profitable  to  the  convert  is  open  to 
grave  suspicion ;  the  presumption  in  such  a  case 
is  on  the  side  of  insincerity,  just  as  it  is  on  the  side 
of  sincerity  when  the  convert  loses,  or  at  least  does 
not  gain,  by  his  conversion.  There  can  be  no 
doubt  that  every  French  Socialist  politician  that 
has  abandoned  Socialism  has  profited  by  the  change 
exceedingly,  both  financially  and  otherwise.  These 
desertions  have  perhaps  done  as  much  as  any- 
thing to  promote  anti-parliamentarism  among  the 
French  proletariat.  But  such  cases  are  happily  in 
a  minority;  on  the  majority  the  demoralising  in- 
fluence of  the  parliamentary  environment  is  more 
subtle  and  less  obvious. 

A  large  proportion — indeed  the  majority — of 
French  Deputies  are  men  in  a  very  modest  financial 
position — country  lawyers,  country  doctors,  veteri- 
nary surgeons,  and  so  on.  When  they  are  elected 
they  come  up  from  their  province  to  Paris  and  find 
themselves  with  an  income  of  £600  a  year.  It  is  not 
a  large  income,  especially  in  Paris,  but  it  is  often 
larger  than  they  have  ever  had  before,  and  its 
possibilities  seem  to  a  man  accustomed  to  the 
simple  life  and  modest  expenditure  of  a  country 
town  much  greater  than  they  actually  are.  If  the 
newly-elected  Deputy  is  married,  he  sometimes 
leaves  his  wife  behind  in  order  to  reduce  expenses, 
and  for  a  time  Madame  Durand  enjoys  the  new 
sensation  of  shining  among  her  friends  and  acquain- 
tances as  Madame  la  Depute.  But  sooner  or  later 
she  hankers  after  Paris;  when  that  happens  she 
naturally  gets  her  way  in  accordance  with  the 
ancient  privilege  of  her  sex.  Once  in  Paris  she  is 
only  too  likely  to  develop  social  ambitions,  and 


156         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

social  ambitions  cost  money.  She  is  invited  to 
receptions  at  Ministries  and  the  Elysee  and 
perhaps  at  an  Embassy  or  two,  and  she  naturally 
wants  to  be  as  well  dressed  as  the  Parisian  women 
whom  she  meets  there.  She  probably  does  not 
succeed  in  that  ambition,  for  it  is  very  difficult  to 
be  as  well  dressed  as  a  Parisian  woman,  but  it  costs 
just  as  much  money  as  if  she  did  succeed.  The 
Deputy,  for  his  part,  becomes  accustomed  to  the 
life  of  Paris,  acquires  perhaps  a  taste  for  good 
dinners  in  more  or  less  expensive  restaurants,  mixes 
in  the  society  of  men  that  spend  a  good  deal  of 
money,  and  in  general  becomes  a  very  different 
person  in  his  habits  and  tastes  from  what  he  was 
before.  He  may  even  think  it  necessary  or  desir- 
able to  acquire  a  "  petite  amie,"  "  just  like  a 
reactionary,"  as  the  Radical  Deputy  says  in  "  Le 
Hoi,"  and  that  may  turn  out  to  be  a  very  expensive 
luxury,  especially  if  the  lady  professes  to  love  him 
for  himself.  With  all  this  an  income  of  £600  a 
year  in  Paris  soon  becomes  inadequate,  and, 
besides,  the  income  is  precarious ;  it  depends  on 
securing  re-election  and  is  guaranteed  for  only  four 
years.  The  prospect  of  being  possibly  obliged  to 
return  to  a  very  modest  situation  in  a  country  town 
or  village  is  not  pleasing  when  one  has  become 
accustomed  to  the  life  of  Paris.  So  the  Deputy 
sees  that  he  must  make  money — a  Deputy  can 
always  make  money,  and  by  means  in  themselves 
perfectly  legitimate  according  to  all  ordinary 
standards.  Direct  and  vulgar  bribery  is  compara- 
tively rare;  there  are,  of  course,  Deputies  that 
accept  a  sum  of  money  or  some  other  direct  bribe 
for  promoting  in  Parliament  the  interests  of  an 
individual  corporation  by  supporting  or  opposing  a 
particular  measure  or  in  some  other  way,  but  such 
cases  are  exceptional.  As  a  rule,  the  financial 


DISCREDIT  OF  PARLIAMENT    157 

interests  proceed  more  cautiously  and  indirectly. 
A  barrister  is  offered  briefs  or  the  position  of  stand- 
ing counsel  to  some  great  financial  or  industrial 
company.  Of  course,  no  conditions  are  attached  to 
the  offer — that  would  be  a  very  clumsy  way  of  going 
about  the  matter — but,  if  a  measure  affecting  the 
company's  interest  happens  to  come  before  the 
Chamber,  it  is  probable  that  the  Deputy  in  ques- 
tion will  act  in  accordance  with  those  interests,  and, 
if  he  be  an  influential  man,  his  action  may  be  very 
effective.  There  are  all  sorts  of  ways  in  which  a 
Deputy  may  be  useful  to  a  commercial  concern ;  it 
may  be  a  question  of  obtaining  a  concession  or 
some  other  favour  from  the  Government.  A 
Deputy  that  is  not  a  barrister  may  be  put  on  a 
board  of  directors  or  otherwise  interested  in  a  per- 
fectly honourable  way.  A  journalist — and  there 
are  many  journalists  in  the  Chamber — may  be  given 
a  good  appointment  on  a  big  Parisian  paper,  or 
capital  may  be  found  for  him  to  start  a  paper  for 
himself.  The  financial  interests  have  innumerable 
methods  of  getting  Deputies  under  their  influence, 
and  they  use  them  all.  The  Panama  affair  was  not 
exceptional;  it  differed  from  many  others  of  the 
same  kind  only  in  its  magnitude  and  in  the  con- 
sequent publicity  given  to  it.  An  investigation  of 
some  of  the  others  would  give  interesting  results. 
We  do  not  yet  know,  for  instance,  all  the  connec- 
tions in  Parliament  and  the  Press  of  the  N'Goko 
Sanga  enterprise,  although  we  know  that  a  leading 
member  of  the  staff  of  a  great  Parisian  paper,  who 
is  now  in  a  still  more  prominent  position,  was  con- 
siderably interested  in  it.  The  temptation  to  make 
money  directly  or  indirectly  out  of  politics  is  very 
great,  and  it  is  not  surprising  that  many  politicians 
succumb  to  it,  since  most  of  the  means  appear 
quite  consistent  with  honourable  conduct.  It  is 


158         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

probable  that  many  politicians,  when  they  take  the 
first  step,  do  not  realise  in  what  a  coil  they  are 
involving  themselves.  Of  course  there  are  means 
of  making  money  in  politics,  other  than  that  of 
accepting  bribes,  which  nobody  would  call  legiti- 
mate. One  has  heard  of  Ministers  who  gambled  on 
the  Stock  Exchange  on  their  official  information, 
and  there  is  a  lady  in  Paris  who  has,  rightly  or 
wrongly,  the  reputation  of  acting  as  intermediary 
in  these  little  transactions.  What  is  certain  in  any 
case  is  that  there  have  been  and  are  too  many 
men  in  French  politics  who,  when  they  leave 
political  life,  are  much  richer  than  they  were  when 
they  entered  it. 

I  confess  that  I  see  no  remedy  for  this  evil,  which 
is  the  inevitable  result  of  capitalist  conditions.  It 
has  been  proposed  to  make  it  illegal  for  members 
of  Parliament  to  be  directors  of  companies  and  even 
to  follow  certain  occupations;  that  might  dimmish 
the  evil,  it  would  not  do  away  with  it.  So  long  as 
the  financial  and  capitalist  interest  exists  it  will 
find  ways  of  influencing  politicians.  Certainly 
some  of  the  more  open  abuses  might  be  suppressed 
in  the  interest  of  public  decency;  it  is  scandalous 
that  a  Cabinet  Minister  should  be  allowed  to  hold 
large  interests  in  concerns  dealing  with  the  State. 
But  such  measures  would  only  be  palliatives.  High 
Finance  has  France  in  its  grip ;  it  is  the  power 
behind  the  Throne,  ubiquitous  and  omnipotent; 
and,  although  it  is  stronger  in  France  than  else- 
where, for  reasons  that  have  been  mentioned,1  it 
is  a  pernicious  influence  in  every  country.  The 
whole  development  of  the  modern  capitalist  system 
tends  to  increase  the  power  of  finance,  and  there  is 
only  one  way  of  escape  from  the  domination  of  the 
financial  interests — Socialism.  Democracy  is  not 
1  See  page  72. 


DISCREDIT  OP  PARLIAMENT    159 

the  cause  of  corruption ;  it  has  not  yet  been  realised 
even  in  the  countries  called  democratic,  least  of  all 
in  France.  It  is  not  a  question  of  regime :  the 
Third  Republic  is  no  more  corrupt  than  the  regimes 
that  preceded  it,  and  if  corruption  has  extended  its 
scope  to  some  degree,  that  is  the  result  of  the 
increased  power  of  Finance  and  has  nothing  to  do 
with  political  conditions.  It  is  idle  to  tell  the 
workmen  that  they  can  get  all  they  want  if  they 
choose  to  capture  Parliament ;  they  know  very  well 
that  it  is  not  true,  since  Parliament  will  always 
be  captured  by  the  financial  interests.  That 
is  the  reason  of  the  anti-parliamentarism  of 
the  Russian  revolution,  which  our  Press  calls 
undemocratic  because  it  is  trying  to  make 
democracy  possible. 

In  France,  as  I  have  said,  there  are  many  mem- 
bers of  Parliament  that  have  never  made,  and  never 
will  make,  a  penny  out  of  politics  directly  or 
indirectly.  That  is  true  of  the  great  majority  of 
the  Socialist  Deputies;  by  common  consent  the 
Socialist  Party  is  recognised  as  the  cleanest  party  in 
French  politics.  The  Socialist  Deputies  are  drawn 
from  all  classes  of  society — the  bourgeoisie,  the 
peasantry,  and  the  proletariat — and  the  reason 
why  they  compare  so  favourably  as  a  whole  with 
the  other  parties  is  no  doubt  that  on  the  one  hand 
they  have  definite  principles,  and  on  the  other  they 
cannot  join  in  the  scramble  for  portfolios.  When 
the  Socialist  Party  was  led  by  the  war  to  depart 
from  its  rule  of  not  participating  in  a  bourgeois 
Ministry,  the  effects  on  the  party  were  disastrous ; 
some  of  the  Socialist  Deputies  have  now  ceased  to 
be  Socialists  in  anything  but  name.  But  happily 
the  party  has  returned  to  its  principles,  and  the 
Social-Patriots,  if  they  are  re-elected  at  all, 
will  not  be  re-elected  by  Socialist  votes.  But, 


160         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

although  the  Socialist  Party  is  exceptionally  free 
from  corruption,  although  the  Deputies  of  pro- 
letarian origin  are  as  a  body  less  amenable  to 
corrupting  influences  than  the  bourgeois,  neverthe- 
less all  alike  undergo  to  some  extent  the 
demoralising  influence  of  Parliament.  A  workman 
that  becomes  a  Deputy  sooner  or  later  becomes  a 
bourgeois  and  out  of  touch  with  his  own  class.  At 
present  the  French  Socialist  Deputies  as  a  whole 
are  painfully  out  of  touch  with  the  rank  and  file  of 
the  party — the  war  is  partly  responsible  for  the 
fact,  which  intensifies  the  discredit  of  Parliament. 
Whenever  the  social  revolution  comes  in  France,  it 
will  not  be  a  parliamentary  revolution ;  it  will  take 
the  form  that  it  is  taking  in  all  the  European 
countries  where  it  has  come  already,  with  such 
modifications  as  would  naturally  arise  from  French 
conditions.  By  timely  reforms  the  parliamentary 
system  might  have  been  saved,  but  the  bourgeoisie, 
which  has  ruled  France  during  the  nineteenth 
century,  has  been  as  blind  and  conservative  as 
was  the  noblesse  in  the  eighteenth  century,  and  is 
likely  to  pay  the  same  penalty.  It  seems  at  last 
disposed  to  make  concessions — the  Government  of 
M.  Clemenceau  introduced  a  legal  eight-hour  day— 
but  it  is  probable  that  these  concessions  made  at 
the  eleventh  hour  will  produce  the  same  effect  as 
the  concessions  of  Louis  XVI.  I  am  disposed  to 
think,  as  I  have  already  said,  that  it  is  too  late  to 
save  the  parliamentary  system  or  the  present 
regime ;  France  is  at  the  cross-roads — one  leads  to 
revolution  and  the  other  to  reaction,  and  nobody 
can  yet  say  which  she  will  take. 

If  she  chooses  the  path  that  leads  to  revolution, 
the  reactionaries  will  have  a  large  responsibility  for 
the  choice.  It  has  been  said  that  France  is  the 
country  of  revivals  and  reconstitutions ;  that  is  only 


DISCREDIT  OF  PARLIAMENT    161 

another  way  of  saying  that  she  is  the  country  of 
reactions,  or  has  been  in  the  past.     That  has  been 
one  of  the  greatest  weaknesses  of  France  since  the 
Revolution — that    nothing    seems    to    have    been 
definitely    acquired;    French    history    during    the 
nineteenth  century  was  a  series  of  reactions.     In 
England  reforms  are  often  violently  opposed,  but 
when  they  are  once  passed  even  the  great  majority 
of  their  opponents  accept  them.  That  is  to  say,  there 
are  no  reactionaries  in  the  true  sense  of  the  term 
in  England,   or  they  are  a  negligible  quantity — 
there  is  the  Morning  Post,  of  course,  but  its  re- 
actionary opinions  are  purely  literary  and  it  is  so 
amusing  that  one  would  be  sorry  to  lose  it.       In 
France  there  is  an  organised  political  party — the 
Action  Frangaise — which  proposes  to  return  to  the 
ancien    regime;    a    parallel    would    be    a    serious 
Jacobite  party  in  England.       It  is  true  that  the 
Action  Francaise  is  a  small  minority,  that  it  has  no 
following  in  the  peasantry  or  the  proletariat,  but 
it  is  a  considerable  force  in  the  bourgeoisie,  it  has 
plenty  of  money  at  its  disposal,  arid  each  successive 
Government  during  the  war  has  thought  it  worth 
while  to  conciliate  it.     It  played  a  large  part  in 
bringing  M.  Clemenceau  into  power  and  in  keeping 
him  there.     When  M.  Painleve  was  Prime  Minister 
in  1917,  clear  evidence  was  obtained  of  seditious 
action   in   the  army   on   the   part   of   the   Action 
Frangaise,    and    M.    Painleve    was    induced    by 
M.  Poincare  to  refrain  from  prosecuting.     I  men- 
tion these  facts  to  show  that  the  Action  Francaise, 
absurd   as  its   programme  seems,   is  not  at  all  a 
negligible  quantity ;  there  is  actually  a  considerable 
number  of  people  in  France  that  want  to  go  back 
to  the  political,  social,  and  economic  conditions  of 
the    eighteenth    century.      Although     the     Third 
Republic  has  existed  for  nearly  half  a  century,  it  is 

M 


162         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

not  yet  accepted  by  the  whole  of  the  French  people. 
Mr.  Chesterton,  if  I  am  not  mistaken,  has  suggested 
somewhere  that  the  reason  of  this  is  that  the 
Republic  is  a  party,  but,  if  that  be  true,  it  is  only 
because  the  Republic  has  not  been  universally 
accepted — Mr.  Chesterton  has  mistaken  an  effect 
for  a  cause.  In  the  same  sense,  every  preceding 
regime  since  the  Revolution  has  been  a  party,  for 
the  form  of  government  has  been  constantly  in  dis- 
pute. So  long  as  there  is  in  any  country  a  body  of 
men  that  refuse  to  accept  the  existing  form  of 
government,  the  supporters  of  the  regime  must 
defend  it  against  them.  In  fact  the  Third  Republic 
has  been  far  more  tolerant  of  the  Royalists  than  was 
the  British  Government  of  the  Jacobites,  so  long  as 
the  latter  were  an  effective  force,  and  I  doubt  very 
much  whether  in  England  at  this  moment  a  party 
whose  avowed  object  it  was  to  overthrow  the 
Monarchy,  by  force  if  necessary,  would  be  allowed 
openly  to  preach  and  even  to  organise  sedition  as 
the  Action  Fran9aise  is. 

These  sterile  controversies  about  the  form  of 
government  have  been  a  great  hindrance  to  pro- 
gress in  France  and  have  seriously  handicapped  the 
country  in  every  way.  It  is  only  just  to  say  that 
they  are  to  some  degree  responsible  for  the  barren 
record  of  the  Third  Republic  in  regard  to  reforms. 
The  Boulangist  movement  and  the  Dreyfus  affair 
forced  Republicans  for  years  to  be  on  their  defence ; 
the  task  of  saving  what  was  acquired  absorbed  all 
their  energies  and  prevented  them  from  under- 
taking reforms.  That  is  what  I  mean  by  saying 
that,  if  revolution  comes,  the  reactionaries  will  have 
a  large  responsibility  for  it.  They  have  indeed 
helped  to  discredit  the  present  regime,  but  it  is  at 
least  possible  that  it  is  not  they  who  will  benefit  by 
the  discredit.  On  the  contrary,  they  may  be  the 


'     DISCREDIT  OF  PARLIAMENT    163 

greatest  sufferers,  for  they  all  belong  to  the 
capitalist  class,  and  in  that  case  they  will  deserve 
no  pity.  The  excessive  preoccupation  of  the 
French  with  forms  of  government  is  no  doubt 
partly  a  result  of  Etatisme — of  the  tendency  to 
regard  the  State  as  an  omnipotent  Providence  dis- 
pensing good  and  evil.  The  Government  is  held 
responsible  for  everything,  it  "  fills  the  butchers' 
shops  with  big  blue  flies,"  or  clears  them  of  flies, 
as  the  case  may  be.  When  things  go  well,  the 
Government  of  the  day  or  the  regime  is  praised 
without  discrimination ;  it  is  blamed  with  equal  lack 
of  discrimination  when  things  go  badly.  So  the 
Neapolitan  fisherman  puts  flowers  and  candles 
before  the  image  of  his  favourite  saint  when  the 
haul  is  good  and  beats  the  image  or  puts  it  in  the 
well  when  the  haul  is  bad.  It  is  probable  that  the 
French  Government  is  often  no  more  responsible 
than  the  saint  for  vicissitudes  of  fortune. 

These,  I  believe,  are  the  main  factors  in  the 
present  unrest  in  France  and  in  the  discredit  into 
which  parliamentary  institutions  and  the  bourgeois 
republican  regime  have  fallen.  Some  of  them  are 
a  legacy  from  the  Revolution,  as  I  shall  try  to  show 
in  the  next  chapter. 


M  2 


CHAPTER   V 

RESULTS   OF   THE   REVOLUTION 

"  Since  the  Temps  does  me  the  honour  of  attaching  some 
importance  to  my  opinion,  I  hasten  to  inform  it,  without  hoping 
that  my  avowal  will  disarm  it,  that  I  remain  the  fierce  enemy  of 
the  Constitution  of  the  year  VIII,  so  carefully  preserved  by  all 
my  friends  that  have  been  in  power  during  the  last  thirty  yeans. 
Not  only  do  I  stand  firm  for  decentralisation,  but  my  ideal  of 
government  is  Federalism,  so  far  am  I  from  meriting  the  reproach 
of  Jacobinism  which  the  Temps  hurls  at  random  at  all  that  are 
not  of  its  sect.  The  ancient  division  into  provinces,  which  was 
the  product  of  history,  was  destroyed  by  the  Revolution  in  a 
moment  of  anger  in  order  to  break  the  resistance  to  the  new  order 
of  the  combined  forces  of  the  old.  It  came  about  that  in  hasten- 
ing the  realisation  of  their  system  of  autoritaire  liberation  the 
Jacobins,  to  use  the  term  employed  by  the  Temps,  chiefly 
succeeded  in  forging  the  instruments  of  Napoleonic  despotism. 
Nevertheless  the  institutions  of  1793  were  remarkably  liberal 
in  comparison  with  those  of  the  year  VIII.  Since  then  we  have 
proclaimed  the  Republic,  but  we  have  not  made  it." — GEORGES 
CLEMENCEAU  (L'Aurore,  July  31,  1903.) 

THE  French  Revolution  of  the  eighteenth  century 
had  a  greater  influence  on  the  civilised  world  than 
any  movement  since  the  Renaissance,  the  influence 
of  which  was  perhaps  less  permanent  than  that  of 
the  Revolution,  for  it  was  unhappily  arrested  by 
the  Reformation  and  the  consequent  counter- 
reformation.  The  effects  of  the  Revolution  ex- 
tended far  beyond  the  borders  of  France;  no 
civilised  country  was  unaffected  by  it.  Indeed,  it 
transformed  the  world  :  to  it  we  owe  our  habits  of 

164 


RESULTS  OF  THE  REVOLUTION  165 

thought,  our  ideas  of  humanitarianism,  tolerance, 
and  freedom — all,  in  fact,  that  makes  the  modern 
world  what  it  is  on  the  intellectual  side.  If  France 
had  never  achieved  anything  but  the  Revolution 
the  world  would  owe  her  a  debt  of  gratitude  which 
can  never  be  repaid.  The  service  that  France 
rendered  to  the  world  was  rendered  at  a  terrible 
cost  to  herself.  Nevertheless  the  Revolution  made 
in  France  profound  changes  for  the  better — politi- 
cal, social,  and  economic — which  the  series  of 
reactions  which  succeeded  it  were  unable  to 
obliterate,  although  they  seriously  impaired  many 
of  them.  France  has  not  yet  regained  all  that  she 
lost  during  the  nineteenth  century  of  what  the 
Revolution  had  given  her.  The  intellectual  France 
of  the  eighteenth  century  was,  on  the  whole,  wider 
and  more  generous  in  its  sympathies  than  the 
France  of  the  nineteenth  century — certainly,  though 
intensely  French,  more  international,  even 
cosmopolitan.  "  The  France  of  Voltaire  and  of 
Montesquieu — that  is  the  great,  the  true  France," 
said  Anatole  France  in  London  in  December  1913. 
That  France  survived  in  the  nineteenth  century  in 
individuals  and  even  in  parties,  but  it  was  not  the 
dominant  France,  which  became  in  most  respects 
one  of  the  most  conservative  countries  of  the 
civilised  world.  The  reactions  of  the  nineteenth 
century  were,  of  course,  the  consequences  of  the 
mistakes  and  extravagances  of  the  Revolution,  but 
those  mistakes  and  extravagances  were  themselves 
almost  entirely  the  result  of  external  interference 
with  the  Revolution.  The  Holy  Alliance  was  chiefly 
responsible  for  all  that  was  bad  in  the  Revolution, 
for  the  sufferings  which  it  brought  on  France,  and 
for  the  reactions  which  unsettled  the  country  and 
hindered  its  progress  during  the  nineteenth  century. 
No  Englishman  can  remember  without  shame  the 


166         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

part  that  England,  in  spite  of  the  generous  and 
far-seeing  statesmanship  of  Charles  James  Fox, 
played  in  the  infamous  attack  on  the  French  Revo- 
lution ;  has  any  rhetoric  been  quite  so  mischievous 
as  that  of  Burke  ?  We  paid  for  our  criminal  folly 
by  twenty  years  of  war  to  rid  the  world  of  the 
Napoleonic  menace  which  we  ourselves  had  created. 
Had  the  Revolution  been  left  alone,  there  would 
have  been  no  Reign  of  Terror,  its  development 
would  have  been  quite  other  than  it  was,  France 
would  never  have  become  an  aggressive  military 
Power,  and  French  history  of  the  nineteenth 
century  would  have  been  very  different  from  what 
it  has  been.  The  perversion  of  the  Revolution 
by  the  monarchies  of  Europe  aided  by  renegade 
French  aristocrats  is  one  of  the  greatest  tragedies 
of  history.  It  is  only  a  very  poor  consolation  that 
the  whole  of  Europe  has  suffered  for  it — for  most 
of  the  European  wars  during  the  nineteenth  century 
can  ultimately  be  traced  to  the  policy  of  the  Holy 
Alliance — and  that  the  French  noblesse  has  paid 
for  its  base  egotism  and  treachery  by  political  anni- 
hilation. It  should  never  be  forgotten  that  many 
of  the  mistakes  of  France  during  the  nineteenth 
century,  many  of  her  existing  weaknesses,  are  the 
result  of  the  persecution  to  which  she  was  subjected 
and  which  checked  and  perverted  her  normal 
development. 

Why,  for  instance,  did  the  Revolution,  which 
began  with  international  aspirations  and  enthusiasm 
for  the  brotherhood  of  man,  end  in  a  narrow  and 
exclusive  Nationalism  and  in  aggressive  militarism 
which  made  France  a  danger  to  Europe  ?  Chiefly 
because  of  foreign  interference.  It  is  true  that 
there  were  two  main  intellectual  influences  in  the 
"Revolution — that  of  Voltaire  and  that  of  Jean- 
Jacques  Rousseau;  the  former  was  the  rationalist 


RESULTS  OF  THE  REVOLUTION  167 

influence,  the  latter  the  religious.  The  Jacobins 
were  true  disciples  of  Jean-Jacques.  The  most  dis- 
cerning picture  in  literature  of  the  Jacobin  character 
is  that  given  by  Anatole  France  in  "Les  Dieux  ont 
soif."  The  Jacobin  was  not  at  all  the  bloodthirsty 
ruffian  that  he  is  usually  represented  to  have  been ; 
he  was  as  a  rule  a  person  of  austere  life,  rigid 
morality,  and  intense  religious  fervour,  whose  aim 
was  to  make  everybody  good  and  moral — the  very 
type  of  the  religious  fanatic.  His  counterpart  in 
history  is  the  inquisitor  who  burned  people  to  save 
their  souls  and  to  protect  others  from  error;  both 
were  animated  with  the  best  possible  intentions. 
The  great  fault  of  the  Jacobin  was  that  he  was  too 
moral.  Robespierre  was  a  Puritan  and,  like  the 
Puritans  of  the  seventeenth  century,  tried  to  enforce 
his  own  ideas  of  religion  and  morality.  He  guillo- 
tined atheists  and  prostitutes  as  well  as  aristocrats, 
and  regarded  disbelief  in  God  as  a  mark  of  a  bad 
citizen.  The  Jacobins,  in  fact,  were  inverted 
Catholics,  whose  intolerance,  was  the  logical  out- 
come of  their  belief  in  authority.  But  it  may  be 
doubted  whether  they  would  ever  have  come  to  the 
top  but  for  the  fear  of  foreign  invasion.  Fear  was 
the  cause  of  the  Terror,  which  was  intelligible  in 
the  circumstances.  France  stood  alone,  with  all 
the  Great  Powers  of  Europe  against  her;  the 
heroism  of  the  armies  of  the  Republic,  ill-equipped 
and  undisciplined,  had  almost  by  a  miracle  repelled 
the  invaders,  but  the  danger  was  great.  And 
Frenchmen  were  in  the  pay  of  the  enemy,  working 
against  France  abroad  and  spying  at  home.  It  is 
not  surprising  that  every  aristocrat  was  presumed 
to  be  a  traitor.  Have  we  not  seen  the  same  spirit 
manifest  itself  with  much  less  excuse  during  the 
recent  war  in  every  belligerent  country  ?  If  "  Pro- 
Germans  "  and  "  Pacifists  "  have  not  been  guillo- 


168         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

tined  in  England,  that  is  not  the  fault  of  the  public ; 
they  have  been  tarred  and  feathered  in  the  United 
States.  Patriotism  and  fear  produce  much  the 
same  results  in  the  twentieth  as  in  the  eighteenth 
century. 

The  rise  of  Napoleon,  the  French  wars  of  con- 
quest, the  aggressive  military  spirit  which  laid  hold 
of  the  French  people,  had  as  their  sole  cause  the 
foreign  attacks  on  the  Revolution.  No  war  in 
history  was  ever  so  purely  defensive  as  was  the  war 
of  the  Revolution  on  the  part  of  France,  but,  like 
all  defensive  wars,  it  degenerated  into  a  war  of 
aggression.  I  do  not  think  that  there  is  an  example 
in  history  of  a  nation  which,  having  been  forced  to 
go  to  war  in  self-defence,  has  been  content  to  stop 
at  self-defence  and  to  end  the  war  when  it  had 
repelled  the  attack.  Having  once  tasted  blood,  it  has 
always  become  aggressive  in  its  turn  and  wanted  to 
continue  until  it  had  completely  crushed  its  enemy. 
And  the  chances  are  that  victory  creates  a  desire 
for  further  conquests;  no  nation  has  ever  yet  ab- 
stained from  abusing  a  victory  or  prevented  the 
wine  of  victory  from  going  to  its  head.  Unf or- 
nately, the  Jacobin  spirit  did  not  die  with 
Robespierre,  nor  did  French  militarism  perish  with 
Napoleon.  Both  have  had  a  deplorable  influence  on 
France  during  the  nineteenth  century,  and  the  per- 
sistence of  militarism,  at  any  rate,  was  again  the 
fault  of  the  Holy  Alliance.  Had  we  left  the  French 
people  to  deal  with  Napoleon  after  Waterloo,  he 
might  have  fared  ill  at  their  hands.  If  he  had  not 
lost  his  throne  he  would  have  been  obliged  to  make 
great  concessions ;  France  would,  sooner  or  later, 
have  returned  to  the  Republic,  and  it  would 
probably  have  lasted  to  this  day.  But  we  forced 
on  France  in  1815  a  Royal  family  that  she  had 
repudiated  and  a  form  of  government  that  she  de- 


RESULTS  OF  THE  REVOLUTION  169 

tested.  We  made  a  martyr  of  the  discredited  Em- 
peror and  by  prolonging  the  Napoleonic  legend 
ultimately  led  to  the  Second  Empire,  which,  by  its 
cheap  imitation  of  Napoleon's  aggressive  policy, 
brought  France  to  Sedan.  It  is  to  a  great  extent 
our  fault — the  fault  of  England,  Prussia,  Austria, 
and  Russia — that  France  remained  during  the  nine- 
teenth century,  except  under  the  Monarchy  of  July, 
a  Chauvinist  and  aggressive  Power,  that  she  was 
distracted  and  retarded  by  successive  reactions  and 
changes  of  regime.  And  when  at  last,  thanks  to 
the  secularisation  of  the  schools  and  to  the  influence 
of  Socialism,  and  of  Jaures  in  particular,  the 
Chauvinists  were  defeated  at  the  end  of  the  nine- 
teenth century,  Russia  and  England  worked 
together  only  too  successfully  to  give  them  back 
their  influence.  Since  1899  the  French  reaction- 
aries, powerless  to  act  openly,  have  influenced  the 
foreign  and  even  the  internal  policy  of  France 
through  the  intermediary  of  the  Government  of  the 
Tsar,  and  since  1904  the  British  Foreign  Office  has 
consistently  backed  the  French  politicians  that  pro- 
moted a  Chauvinist  and  bellicose  policy  and  opposed 
the  others.  M.  Delcasse,  who  nearly  dragged 
France  and  Europe  into  war  in  1905,  was  the  hero  of 
the  British  Foreign  Office  and  of  most  of  the  British 
Press  and  the  faithful  servant  of  Edward  VII. 
M.  Rouvier  and  M.  Caillaux,  who  saved  France  and 
Europe  from  war,  were  pursued  with  undying 
hatred  as  enemies  of  England.  Certainly  the 
French  people  is  to  blame  for  having  allowed 
its  rulers  to  keep  it  in  ignorance  of  the 
obligations  to  which  they  had  committed 
it  and  for  having  disinterested  itself  in 
foreign  affairs,  but  it  is  none  the  less  true 
that  it  has  been  cruelly  deceived  and  that  the 
misfortunes  of  France  since  the  Revolution  have 


1TO         MY  SECOND  COUNTRY 

been  principally   due  to  foreign   interference   and 
foreign  control  of  French  policy. 

Nevertheless,  the  Revolution  made  mistakes 
which  were  not  due  to  foreign  interference,  but 
rather  to  the  affection  of  the  Revolutionaries,  and 
of  the  Jacobins  hi  particular,  for  theories  deduced 
by  the  a  priori  method  from  first  principles,  which 
they  rigidly  applied  without  considering  whether 
the  conditions  were  suitable.  The  Declaration  of 
the  Rights  of  Man  is  itself  an  example  of  this 
method.  Its  very  first  statement — that*  all  men  are 
born  free  and  equal — is  evidently  untrue,  and  many 
of  the  other  assertions  which  it  puts  forth  as  self- 
evident  truths  are  far  from  being  indisputable ;  its 
authors  were  unable  to  rid  themselves  of  the  passion 
for  dogma.  The  chief  causes  of  the  Revolution,  as  of 
all  other  great  movements  in  history,  were  economic, 
but  it  was  a  political  rather  than  a  social  revolu- 
tion. It  did  nothing  for  the  proletariat,  to  whom 
its  success  was  in  a  large  measure  due,  and  the 
attempt  of  a  few  men  to  probe  economic  evils  to 
their  roots  was  promptly  suppressed.  The  French 
Revolution  was  essentially  a  bourgeois  revolution. 
Holding  as  they  did  that  the  right  of  private  pro- 
perty was  sacred  and  inviolate,  the  Revolutionaries 
aimed  at  extending  it  to  as  many  people  as  possible 
—at  creating  the  largest  possible  number  of 
bourgeois — but,  as  it  is  impossible  for  everybody  to 
have  private  property,  the  case  of  the  propertyless 
became  worse  than  ever,  and  the  Revolution,  in 
'fact,  helped  the  development  of  modern  industrial 
capitalism.  In  so  far  as  it  was  a  social  revolu- 
tion it  merely  substituted  the  bourgeoisie  for  the 
noblesse  as  the  governing  class.  From  the  Revolu- 
tion issued  the  grand  bourgeois  families,  whose 
fortunes  originated  for  the  most  part  in  the  pur- 
chase of  biens  nationautv  (confiscated  ecclesiastic 


RESULTS  OF  THE  REVOLUTION  171 

property),  many  of  whom  forgot  their  origins  and 
became  pillars  of  reaction.  Some  obtained  titles 
from  Louis-Philippe,  Napoleon  III,  or  even  the 
Pope.  One  of  the  leading  Royalist  Senators  at  the 
present  moment  is  a  gentleman  the  founder  of 
whose  family  had  a  special  taste  for  desecrating 
churches  and  acquired  a  considerable  fortune  by 
plundering  chateaux  and  by  fortunate  purchases  of 
ecclesiastical  property  which  his  pious  Catholic 
descendant  still  enjoys.  When  the  latter  enter- 
tains at  his  chateau  in  the  Vendee  the 
neighbouring  families  of  the  old  noblesse,  most  of 
them  recognise  their  own  arms  on  the  silver  used 
at  table. 

The  great  economic  change  effected  by  the  Revo- 
lution was,  of  course,  in  regard  to  land  tenure.  It 
gave  prosperity  to  the  peasants,  who  became  the 
owners  of  the  land  that  they  tilled,  and  the  law 
obliging  an  owner  of  land  to  divide  it  equally 
among  his  children  at  his  death  has  prevented  land 
from  again  becoming  concentrated  in  the  hands  of  a 
few  individuals.  That  this  system  has  its  advan- 
tages nobody  would  deny — it  was  an  immense 
advance  on  the  land  system  of  the  old  regime  which 
still  exists  in  England,  and  for  a  long  time  it 
worked  well.  But  it  has  also,  as  we  shall  see,  had 
great  disadvantages,  both  material  and  moral,  and 
modern  conditions  are  rapidly  making  it  impos- 
sible. It  would  be  unreasonable  to  blame  the 
Revolution  for  not  having  gone  further  than  it  did 
in  the  direction  of  economic  change.  The  condi- 
tions in  France  at  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century 
were  not  yet  ripe  for  Socialism,  if  Karl  Marx  was 
right  in  thinking  that  industrial  capitalism  is  a 
necessary  stage  in  economic  development.  It  is  true 
that  Russia  is  now  trying  the  experiment  of  passing 
directly  from  feudalism  to  Socialism,  but  it  remains 


172          MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

to  be  seen  whether  the  experiment  will  succeed, 
and  if  it  does,  it  will  be  because  the  Russians  have 
behind  them  a  century's  experience  of  industrialism 
in  other  countries.  At  the  end  of  the  eighteenth 
century  modern  Socialism  was  still  impossible; 
the  French  Revolution  went  as  far  as  possible  in 
the  circumstances.  Its  work  was  necessarily  in- 
complete and  requires  to  be  completed,  but,  what- 
ever its  mistakes,  it  was  the  source  and  inspiration 
of  all  that  is  best  in  modern  France.  One  has  only 
to  study  the  conditions  of  the  old  regime  to  realise 
how  much  injustice  and  oppression,  how  much 
misery  and  suffering,  the  Revolution  swept  away. 
If  it  did  not  thoroughly  achieve  Liberty,  Equality, 
Fraternity,  these  three  words  still  express  the 
ideal  of  all  Socialists  and  liberals  and  sum  up  all 
their  aims. 

The  greatest  mistake  of  the  Revolution  was  a 
political  one — the  abolition  of  the  old  French  pro- 
vinces and  the  centralisation  of  government  and 
administration.  The  process  of  centralisation 
had  already  begun  under  Louis  XIV,  but  it  was 
carried  much  further  by  the  Revolution,  and 
Napoleon  completed  it,  for  it  exactly  suited  his 
ideal  of  government;  a  despotic  ruler  is  always 
jealous  of  local  liberties.  The  Jacobins,  who  were 
on  the  side  of  authority  against  liberty,  were  also 
naturally  and  logically  partisans  of  centralisation, 
but  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  it  was  the  revolt  of 
the  Vendee  that  gave  force  to  the  ideal  of  "  The 
Republic  One  and  Indivisible  "  and  led  to  the  con- 
viction that  that  ideal  could  be  realised  only  by 
suppressing  all  provincial  autonomy.  The  cen- 
tralisers  did  their  work  thoroughly.  They  divided 
France  into  departments,  mostly  named  after  rivers 
or  mountains,  the  areas  of  which  were  decided 
arbitrarily  without  regard  to  local  interests  or  local 


RESULTS  OF  THE  REVOLUTION  173 

peculiarities.  They  deliberately  fixed  the  boun- 
daries of  the  departments  in  such  a  way  as  to 
prevent  them  from  coinciding  with  those  of  the 
ancient  provinces ;  for  instance,  the  department  of 
the  Yonne  is  composed  of  a  piece  of  Champagne 
and  a  piece  of  Burgundy.  It  would  be  impossible 
to  restore  the  provinces  without  altering  the  boun- 
daries of  some  departments,  for  there  is  not  a 
single  group  of  departments  which  is  exactly  co- 
terminous with  an  ancient  province.  The  aim  was 
to  stamp  out  all  local  differences  and  bring  about 
uniformity  throughout  the  whole  of  France.  The 
attempt  was,  happily,  a  failure.  As  I  have  already 
said,  legally  and  administratively  the  provinces  no 
longer  exist,  but  they  still  exist  for  all  other  pur- 
poses. A  Frenchman  may  forget  in  what  depart- 
ment he  was  born;  he  never  forgets  his  native 
province.  He  is  a  Provengal,  an  Auvergnat,  a 
Tourangeot,  a  Burgundian,  a  Breton,  a  Norman,  a 
Fleming,  or  a  Lorrainer  before  he  is  a  Frenchman, 
and  it  makes  all  the  difference  in  the  world  which 
he  is,  for  the  provincial  characteristics  and  idiosyn- 
crasies are  still  as  marked  as  ever  and  the  provincial 
names  represent  different  types  and  even  different 
races.  There  is  more  difference,  for  instance, 
between  a  Provencal  and  a  Lorrainer  or  a  French 
Fleming  than  there  is  between  either  and  the 
inhabitants  of  the  adjoining  foreign  countries. 
Nature  has  been  too  strong  for  the  centralisers. 
The  meaningless  departments,  which  represent 
nothing,  exist  only  for  legal  and  administrative 
purposes;  it  never  has  been  and  never  will  be 
possible  to  galvanise  them  into  real  life  or  to  force 
the  people  to  accept  them.  Ask  a  Frenchman 
where  he  comes  from  and  he  will  never  reply 
66  Seine-Inferieure  "  or  "  Haute-Marne  " ;  he  will 
say  "  Normandy  "  or  "  Champagne."  The  village 


174         MY  SECOND   COUNTRY 

in  which  a  Frenchman  is  born  is  his  "  pays," 
and  his  real  "patrie"  is  his  province. 
The  strongest  patriotism  hi  France  is  regional 
patriotism,  because  it  is  the  only  natural  patriotism. 
It  is  older  than  the  French  Monarchy,  it  has  sur- 
vived the  Revolution  and  it  will  never  be  stamped 
out. 

Mystical  patriotism — devotion  to  France  con- 
ceived as  a  lady  with  a  Greek  profile  wearing  a 
helmet  or  a  cap  of  Liberty,  whose  bust  is  to  be 
found  in  every  mairie — dates  from  the  Revolution 
and  was  its  creation.  Allegiance  to  the  sovereign 
took  its  place  under  the  ancien  regime;  Joan 
d'Arc  was  inspired,  not  by  devotion  to  France,  but 
by  loyalty  to  her  liege  lord,  who  so  basely  deserted 
her.  Nobody  before  the  Revolution  would  have 
talked  of  France,  as  M.  Viviani  does,  as  a  "  moral 
person  ";  the  habit  of  personifying  a  nation,  which 
has  been  so  fruitful  a  source  of  misconceptions  and 
false  notions,  is  a  modern  vice.  When  the 
sovereign  disappeared  in  France  it  was  thought 
necessary  to  find  a  substitute  for  him  to  offer  to 
popular  worship  and  the  "  moral  person  "  was  in- 
vented. It  is,  I  think,  because  regional  patriotism 
is  the  natural  patriotism  for  Frenchmen  and  the 
other  is  artificial  that  the  latter  has  always  taken 
the  form  of  Chauvinism.  For  it  is  impossible  to  deny 
that  Chauvinism  is  essentially  French  and  is  very 
difficult  to  distinguish  from  French  patriotism, 
which  is  not  a  natural  love  of  country  but  a  sort  of 
religious  cult  of  an  ideal  France  which  ministers  to 
national  vanity.  And  Nationalism  is  itself  a 
product  of  the  Revolution,  which  was  forced  into 
it  by  attacks  from  without.  The  conquests  of 
Napoleon  naturally  strengthened  Nationalist  and 
Chauvinist  sentiment — they  had  exactly  the  same 
effect  on  France  as  had  the  victories  over  Austria, 


RESULTS  OF  THE  REVOLUTION  175 

Denmark,  and  France  on  Prussia  later  on.  Had 
the  Holy  Alliance  left  Napoleon  alone  and  treated 
"France  justly,  it  is  probable  that  the  Chauvinist 
spirit  would  have  died  out,  but,  as  always,  the 
abuse  of  victory  produced  in  the  vanquished  a  desire 
for  revenge,  and  it  became  the  dream  of  the  French 
to  retrieve  their  losses.  During  the  reigns  of 
Louis  XVIII,  Charles  X,  and  Louis-Philippe 
the  democratic  party  was  always  clamouring  for  a 
spirited  foreign  policy,  and  Louis-Philippe's 
pacifism  was  one  of  the  causes  of  his  unpopularity. 
"  They  hate  me  because  I  am  in  favour  of  peace," 
he  said  to  Victor  Hugo.  And  he  was  right. 
Under  Napoleon  III  France  was  an  aggressive  and 
bellicose  nation.  The  defeat  of  1871  would  have 
been  a  wholesome  lesson  had  the  terms  of  peace 
been  just  and  reasonable,  but  once  more  the  victors 
abused  their  victory,  with  the  inevitable  result. 
Thus  was  Chauvinism  nourished  and  kept  alive  in 
a  naturally  warlike  people — for  the  French  are 
and  always  have  been  born  soldiers.  When  at  last 
the  great  majority  of  the  French  people  abandoned 
the  "Revanche"  and  the  Chauvinist  party  was 
defeated  by  the  influences  that  have  been  men- 
tioned, the  Chauvinist  propaganda  was  driven 
under  ground,  so  to  speak,  and  having  by  sub- 
terranean methods,  with  help  from  outside  France, 
undermined  the  forces  of  peace  and  Inter- 
nationalism, came  out  once  more  into  the  open  in 
1912  and  for  two  years  made  a  campaign  of  provo- 
cation. Chauvinism  triumphed  in  January  1918 
when  M.  Raymond  Poincare  was  elected  Presi- 
dent of  the  Republic  by  the  votes  of  all  the 
reactionaries  and  militarists  in  order  to  carry  on  a 
spirited  foreign  policy  ("  une  politique  fiere  "). 
The  triumph  was  facilitated  by  the  curious  in- 
sularity of  the  French,  which  had  led  them  to 


176         MY  SECOND  COUNTRY 

concentrate  all  their  attention  on  internal  affairs 
and  to  be  indifferent  to  foreign  politics.  M.  Emile 
Combes,  who  is  in  many  ways  a  typical  Frenchman, 
is  a  striking  example  of  that  insularity.  When  he 
was  Prime  Minister  he  used  at  Cabinet  Councils, 
when  a  question  of  foreign  policy  came  up,  to  tell 
his  Foreign  Minister,  M.  Delcasse,  to  settle  it  with 
the  President  of  the  Republic  (M.  Loubet) ;  he  did 
not  consider  foreign  affairs  to  be  of  sufficient  im- 
portance to  occupy  the  time  of  the  Cabinet.  Even 
Jaures,  although  from  the  first  he  recognised  the 
danger  of  the  Russian  Alliance  and  of  the  Moroccan 
adventure,  allowed  himself  to  be  immersed  in  the 
controversy  about  Proportional  Representation  at 
the  critical  moment  when  Chauvinism  was  again 
raising  its  head. 

One  of  the  strongest  reasons  for  believing  that 
modern  French  patriotism  is  artificial  and  not 
natural  to  Frenchmen  is  the  fact  that  so  many  great 
French  writers  have  been  anti-patriotic  in  the  sense 
of  being  opposed  to  mystical  patriotism.  Therein 
they  only  followed  Voltaire  :  "  Candide  "is  by 
implication  the  most  scathing  satire  on  patriotism 
and  nationalism  that  has  ever  been  written;  it  is 
inspired  by  pure  internationalism.  A  whole  group 
of  writers  under  the  Third  Republic  revived  the 
tradition  of  the  "  true  France  "  and  of  the  founders 
of  the  Revolution :  they  include  such  names  as 
Guy  de  Maupassant,  Octave  Mirbeau,  and  the 
greatest  of  all  French  writers  since  Voltaire — 
Anatole  France.  Mirbeau's  best  novel,  "Le 
Calvaire,"  contains  an  indictment  of  patriotism  all 
the  more  effective  since  it  leaves  the  reader  to  draw 
the  conclusions;  "  Sebastien  Roch  "  and  others  of 
his  books  have  the  same  tendency.  Mirbeau  hated 
the  bourgeoisie — its  religion,  its  morality,  and  its 
ideals — with  all  his  soul.  Anatole  France  destroys 


RESULTS  OF  THE  REVOLUTION  177 

patriotism  with  ridicule ;  his  delicate  irony  is  more 
dangerous  than  Mirbeau's  direct  attacks.  Writer 
after  writer  has  exposed  the  brutality  and  injustice 
of  the  military  system  and  the  evils  of  conscription, 
in  such  books  as  Lucien  Descaves'  "  Sous-offs  "  and 
the  works  of  the  great  ironist,  Georges  Courteline. 
Infinite  pathos  underlies  the  humorous  irony 
of  "Le  Train  de  8  h.  47,"  and  "  Les  Gaietes  des 
PEscadron,"  to  mention  two  among  Courteline 's 
many  studies  of  life  in  military  service.  No  other 
country  has  produced  such  a  crop  of  anti-patriotic 
writers  of  great  distinction  as  France;  the  reason 
can  only  be  that  mystical  patriotism  is  alien 
from  the  rationalist,  realist  French  nature, 
and  has  been  imposed  upon  it  by  circum- 
stances. At  present  the  artificial  mystical 
patriotism  exists  side  by  side  with  the  natural 
regional  patriotism,  but  the  former  is  transitory, 
the  latter  eternal. 

It  is  a  true  instinct  that  is  making  some  French- 
men turn  to  decentralisation  as  an  alternative  to 
the  present  parliamentary  system.  Experience  has 
shown  that  democracy  is  impossible  in  large  coun- 
tries ;  it  can  be  made  possible  not  only  in  France 
but  everywhere  else  only  by  decentralisation — if 
you  like,  by  "  restoring  the  heptarchy."  Decen- 
tralisation is  also  essential  to  internationalism. 
Some  of  us  thought  once — I  did  myself — that  the 
formation  of  large  empires  was  a  step  towards  inter- 
nationalism. That  was  a  delusion.  They  merely 
intensify  and  exaggerate  national  rivalries  and  dis- 
putes and  have  produced  the  most  frightful  war 
that  the  world  has  ever  known.  Moreover,  they 
tend  to  produce  a  dull  uniformity,  to  suppress  local 
variety,  and  they  are  unfavourable  to  art  and  litera- 
ture, which  have  almost  always  flourished  most  in 
small  communities.  The  greatest  period  of  Italian 

N 


178         MY  SECOND   COUNTRY 

art  was  the  period  when  Italy  was  split  up  into 
innumerable  small  States  hardly  extending  beyond 
the  limits  of  a  town ;  Italy  is  now  one  of  the  least 
artistic  countries  in  the  world.  France  seems  to  be 
an  exception  to  this  rule,  because  the  whole  intellec- 
tual and  artistic  life  of  the  country  has  been  con- 
centrated in  Paris,  which  is  to  France  what  no  other 
capital  is  to  a  country.  But  already  there  are  signs 
of  intellectual  decentralisation  in  France ;  Paris  no 
longer  has  the  influence  that  it  once  had  over 
the  country.  Uniformity  is  not  necessary  to 
unity;  what  is  needed  is  unity  in  diversity,  not 
merely  in  the  nation  but  in  the  whole  civilised 
world — an  internationalism  based  on  infinite  local 
variety. 

The  special  need  of  decentralisation  in  France  has 
been  recognised  by  Frenchmen  of  all  shades  of 
opinion.  The  Boulangist  movement  was  in  the  first 
place  principally  a  movement  in  favour  of  decen- 
tralisation ;  it  was  for  that  reason  that  many 
Radicals,  including  M.  Clemenceau,  rallied  to  the 
support  of  General  Boulanger  until  he  was  bought 
by  the  Royalists  and  the  movement  became  a  plot 
against  the  Republic.  This  perversion  of  the  Bou- 
langist movement  discredited  the  demand  for  de- 
centralisation, and  it  became — quite  illogically— 
the  mark  of  a  true  Republican  to  oppose  it.  The 
fact  that  the  Action  Francaise  is  in  favour  of  de- 
centralisation merely  because  the  provinces  existed 
under  the  ancien  regime  still  causes  a  large  number 
—perhaps  the  majority — of  Republicans  to  regard 
all  decentralising  proposals  with  suspicion.  The 
decentralisation  advocated  by  the  Action  Francaise 
would,  of  course,  be  the  opposite  of  democratic; 
democratic  decentralisation  is  quite  a  different 
matter.  There  is  actually  before  Parliament  a 
scheme  of  decentralisation,  the  author  of  which  is 


RESULTS  OF  THE  REVOLUTION  179 

M.  Jean  Hennessy,  Deputy  for  the  Charente,  who 
began  his  political  career  as  a  Bonapartist,  but  is 
now  a  staunch  Republican  with  strong  leanings 
towards  Socialism.  M.  Hennessy  proposes  the  crea- 
tion of  what,  in  order  to  disarm  prejudice,  he  calls 
"  regional  "  legislative  assemblies;  each  "  region  " 
would  include  several  of  the  existing  departments 
and,  I  imagine,  would  be  as  nearly  as  possible  iden- 
tical with  an  ancient  province.  He  further  pro- 
poses that  the  members  of  the  regional  assemblies 
should  be  elected  on  a  system  of  proportional  repre- 
sentation and  should  be  the  representatives,  not  of 
localities,  but  of  occupations.  All  the  electors 
would  be  grouped  according  to  their  trade, 
calling,  or  profession,  and  each  group  would  be 
represented  proportionately  to  its  numbers ;  there 
would  be  a  special  group  composed  of  all  that  did 
not  come  under  one  of  the  other  categories.  This 
system,  which  resembles  that  of  the  Trade  Union 
Congress,  means,  in  fact,  the  substitution  of  econo- 
mic for  political  methods  of  social  organisation.  In 
any  case,  it  is  important  that  the  members  of  a 
regional  or  any  other  elected  assembly  should  be 
the  delegates,  not  merely  the  representatives,  of 
their  electors.  What  has  to  be  got  rid  of  is  the 
"  representative  system  "  under  which  a  member 
of  Parliament  during  his  term  of  office  is  free  from 
all  control  on  the  part  of  his  electors.  One  method 
of  exercising  popular  control  of  elected  delegates  is 
the  referendum,  which  exists  in  Switzerland,  but  I 
should  prefer  that  which  has  been  adopted  by  the 
Russian  Socialist  Republic,  which  gives  the  electors 
the  power  to  withdraw  a  delegate  in  certain  con- 
ditions ;  the  period  for  which  an  assembly  is  elected 
ought  also  to  be  short.  The  regional  or  provincial 
assemblies  should  have  much  more  to  do  than  the 
National  Assembly,  which  might  well  be  elected  by 

N  2 


180         MY   SECOND  COUNTRY 

them,  and  should,  of  course,  like  them,  consist  of  a 
single  Chamber.  It  will  be  objected  that  the 
system  of  indirect  election  is  undemocratic,  and  the 
example  of  the  French  Senate  will  be  quoted.  But 
the  Senators  are  not  chosen  by  political  bodies  like 
a  provincial  assembly;  the  system  is  doubly  in- 
direct and,  as  has  been  shown,  grotesquely  unjust  ;J 
further,  the  Senators  are  elected  for  nine  years,  and 
there  is  no  means  of  recalling  them.  If  the  National 
Assembly  were  elected  before  each  of  its  sessions 
on  a  system  of  proportional  representation  by  pro- 
vincial assemblies  themselves  elected  at  frequent 
intervals,  it  would  be  thoroughly  representative  of 
the  country. 

The  restoration  to  France  of  Alsace-Lorraine  has 
made  the  question  of  decentralisation  an  urgent 
one.  The  French  Government  proposes  to  merge 
the  recovered  provinces  into  the  centralised  French 
system  and  split  them  up  into  departments;  the 
results  of  such  a  policy  are  likely  to  be  disastrous 
and  to  cause  grave  discontent  among  the  inhabi- 
tants of  the  provinces,  who  have  had  a  considerable 
measure  of  autonomy  for  many  years.  The  Alsa- 
tians that  were  most  eager  to  return  to  France, 
such  as  the  Abbe  Wetterle,  have  declared  that  a 
special  regime  would  be  necessary  for  the  recovered 
provinces  at  least  for  a  time,  and  there  is  already 
in  Alsace  a  strong  demand  for  autonomy.  The 
inhabitants  of  the  recovered  provinces  are  likely  in 
any  case  to  suffer  economically  from  the  change, 
for  German  social  legislation  is  much  more  advanced 
than  French ;  there  is  a  far  better  system  of  old  age 
pensions  and  of  insurance  in  Germany,  school 
teachers  and  other  Government  servants  are  better 
paid,  and  in  nearly  every  lespect  the  economic 
conditions  in  Alsace-Lorraine  have  been  better 
1  See  page  100. 


RESULTS  OF  THE  REVOLUTION  181 

under  the  German  rule  than  they  were  under  the 
French  or  are  likely  to  be.  These  facts  make  the 
failure  of  the  Germans  to  win  over  these  peoples  of 
their  own  race  and  language  all  the  more  astonish- 
ing ;  it  is  a  proof  of  incredible  stupidity.  But,  how- 
ever strong  the  attachment  of  the  Alsace-Lor- 
rainers  to  France,  it  is  likely  to  be  seriously 
impaired  sooner  or  later  if  to  economic  losses  are 
added  political  causes  for  discontent.  If  the 
French  people  are  wise,  they  will  insist  on  the  crea- 
tion of  provincial  assemblies  in  Alsace  and  in  the 
reconstituted  province  of  Lorraine  composed  of 
the  two  portions  which  have  been  separated  for 
nearly  half  a  century.  That  would  be  a 
first  step  towards  decentralisation ;  it  would  not  be 
long  before  the  rest  of  France  demanded  the  same 
liberties. 

One  of  the  chief  obstacles  to  this  and  many  other 
necessary  reforms  in  France  is  the  way  in  which  the 
Revolution  has  been  made  into  a  fetish.  Because 
the  Revolution  did  so  much,  too  many  Frenchmen 
seem  to  imagine  that  it  left  nothing  more  to  be 
done  and  reached  finality.  One  sees  the  Declaration 
of  the  Rights  of  Man  quoted  sometimes  in  French 
papers  as  if  it  were  a  body  of  inspired  dogma  which 
it  is  impious  to  question — such  papers  as  the 
Temps  often  find  it  convenient  to  quote  it 
against  Socialism  and  even  against  the  income 
tax,  which  is  supposed  to  be  condemned  by  the 
fact  that  the  Revolutionaries  believed  in  indirect 
faxation.  That  belief  was,  of  course,  a  reaction 
against  the  oppressive  personal  taxes  of  the  ancien 
regime  and  was  made  possible  only  by  inadequate 
understanding  of  the  incidence  of  taxation.  Yet 
surely  one  may  have  even  a  passionate  admiration 
for  the  Revolution  and  for  the  great  work  that  it 
accomplished — every  true  Frenchman  must  have — 


182         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

and  yet  recognise  that  its  authors  were  fallible  like 
other  human  beings,  and  that,  like  all  human  move- 
ments, it  was  incomplete.  The  present  task  before 
the  French  people  is  to  continue  and  complete  the 
Revolution  by  carrying  to  their  logical  conclusion 
the  great  revolutionary  principles  which  even  their 
authors  only  imperfectly  understood. 


CHAPTER  VI 

SMALL  PROPERTY  AND  ITS  RESULTS 

'*  Meanness  may  be  as  bad  a  source  of  extravagance  as  reckless 
daring  ;  the  business  as  well  as  the  national  affairs  of  France, 
since  the  triumph  of  the  middle  class,  have  too  often  been  con- 
ducted in  a  petit  bourgeois  spirit,  which  is  at  the  same  time 
stingy  and  wasteful." — ALBERT-L^ON  GU^BARD. 

SINCE  the  Revolution  France  has  been  essentially 
a  bourgeois  country,  and  it  is  still  the  bourgeoisie 
that  holds  the  reins  of  power  in  spite  of  manhood 
suffrage.  During  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth 
century  France  was  not  even  nominally  a  demo- 
cratic country,  for  the  proletariat  and  even  a  large 
proportion  of  the  land-owning  peasantry  were  de- 
prived of  the  franchise  by  a  property  qualification 
which  varied  in  amount  at  different  times.  But 
even  since  the  extension  of  the  franchise  to  every 
adult  man  the  bourgeoisie  has  retained  its  hold.  It 
has  done  so  with  the  aid  of  the  peasants.  We  have 
seen  how  the  skilful  use  of  the  centralised  system  of 
administration  enabled  the  bourgeoisie  in  1830  and 
again  in  1848  to  frustrate  the  hopes  of  the  Parisian 
proletariat  when  they  seemed  on  the  point  of  being 
fulfilled,  but  on  the  second  occasion,  at  any  rate, 
the  plot  would  have  failed  without  the  support  of 
the  peasants.  It  was  they  who,  on  December  10, 
1848,  elected  Louis-Napoleon  Bonaparte  President 
of  the  Second  Republic,  which  they  thereby 

183 


184         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

destroyed.  This  alliance  between  the  bourgeoisie 
and  the  peasantry,  which  has  continued  ever 
since,  although  it  has  been  weakening  for 
several  years,  was  a  natural  one,  for,  after  all, 
the  peasants — those  that  own  land — are  them- 
selves bourgeois  in  the  strict  sense  of  the 
term.  A  bourgeois  is  a  person  that  owns 
property — land  or  capital — however  small,  and  all 
the  peasants,  except  the  small  minority  of  agricul- 
tural labourers,  own  property.  There  is,  of  course, 
this  great  difference  between  the  bourgeoisie  and 
the  peasants — that  the  property  of  the  latter  con- 
sists entirely  or  chiefly  of  land  which  they  work 
themselves  and  that  they  live  by  their  own  labour, 
not  on  rent  or  interest.  The  peasant  never  retires 
on  his  savings,  he  works  as  long  as  he  is  able  to  do 
so,  and  that  is  usually  until  the  day  of  his  death. 
A  large  section  of  the  Bourgeoisie,  on  the  other 
hand,  consists  of  people  with  incomes  derived  from 
rent  or  interest  on  property  which  they  either  in- 
herited or  accumulated.  The  petit  rentier  class, 
which  lives  on  small  unearned  incomes,  is  the  most 
conservative,  the  most  prejudiced,  the  most  stupid, 
the  most  sordid  and  the  most  avaricious  class  in 
France  :  the  class  that  has  always  thrown  its  whole 
weight  against  reforms,  especially  social  reforms, 
the  class  that  has  supported  colonial  expansion  and 
a  bellicose  and  provocative  foreign  policy  in  the 
mistaken  belief  that  war  would  be  profitable.  It  is 
now  beginning  to  find  out  its  mistake. 

France  is  not  only  a  bourgeois  country,  it  is  also 
to  a  very  large  extent  a  country  of  small  property. 
Great  fortunes,  although  industrial  development 
and,  above  all,  financial  enterprises  have  made 
them  more  numerous  in  recent  years  than  they 
once  were,  are  still  much  fewer  than  in  England 
or  America.  Property  is  more  equally  divided  in 


SMALL  PROPERTY  185 

France,  and  the  law  secures  to  a  great  extent  its 
constant  subdivision,  while  at  the  same  time  it  does 
much  to  secure  its  transmission  from  one  genera- 
tion to  another  in  the  same  families  and  to  prevent 
its  changing  hands.1  I  have  already  mentioned  the 
advantages  of  the  system  of  small  property,  which 
was  the  work  of  the  Revolution ;  its  disadvantages, 
both  economic  and  social,  both  moral  and  material, 
far  outweigh  the  advantages.  Small  property  has 
had  a  disastrous  effect  on  the  French  people.  It  is 
chiefly  responsible  for  the  survival  of  obsolete 
methods  of  production,  and  it  has  produced  exces- 
sive conservatism  in  business  methods,  want  of 
enterprise,  lack  of  initiative,  timidity  and,  above 
all,  avarice.  One  does  not  find  before  the  Revolu- 
tion evidence  of  the  excessive  prudence,  especially 
in  regard  to  money  matters,  the  inordinate  respect, 
amounting  in  some  cases  to  worship,  of  money, 
which  have  been  too  prevalent  in  modern  France. 
Nowhere  else  have  I  met  so  often  with  the  real 
spirit  of  the  miser  who  loves  and  hoards  money  for 
its  own  sake,  who  has  a  positive  affection  for  the 
very  coins  and  likes  to  finger  them  and  stroke  them. 
French  peasants  will  often  make  a  bad  bargain 
because  they  cannot  resist  a  handful  of  gold  or  a 
bundle  of  bank  notes  spread  out  on  a  table  before 
them ;  one  sees  in  their  glistening  eyes  the  evidence 
of  an  uncontrollable  passion.  The  very  word  used 
in  French  for  receiving  payment  of  a  sum  of  money 
indicates  this  curious  passion  for  handling  the 
actual  coin  :  "  je  vais  toucher  1'argent,"  a  French- 
man says — "I  am  going  to  finger  the  money." 
But  let  nobody  be  led  into  hasty  generalisations 

1  By  French  law  a  married  man  is  obliged  to  leave  the  bulk 
of  his  property  to  his  wife  and  children.  He  may  give  a  slight 
advantage  to  one  child ;  otherwise  the  children  must  all  share 
equally. 


186         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

and  proceed  to  write  down  the  whole  French  nation 
as  misers.  There  are  extremely  generous  people  in 
France,  plenty  of  them,  and  they  are  to  be  found  in 
all  classes.  I  have  come  across  examples  of  great 
generosity  on  the  part  of  peasants  who  are  com- 
monly, and  with  some  reason,  regarded  as  the  most 
thrifty  class  of  the  population.  But  generosity  is 
more  prevalent  among  those  who  earn  their  living 
by  their  brains  or  their  hands  and  live  in  towns 
than  it  is  among  any  class  of  property-holders. 
The  least  avaricious  people  in  France  as  a  rule  are 
the  proletariat  and  the  professional,  literary  and 
artistic  classes,  especially  those  of  what  are  called 
bohemian  tendencies.  The  proletariat  is  indeed 
almost  entirely  free  from  avarice,  for  it  is  but  little 
addicted  to  the  vice  of  thrift.  The  workman  as  a 
rule  spends  his  money  as  he  earns  it,  as  a  man  ought 
to  do  and  as  all  would  in  reasonable  economic  con- 
ditions, or  saves  only  a  reasonable  proportion  for  a 
rainy  day.  And  the  workman,  who  is  at  the  mercy 
of  an  employer  and  may  risk  his  whole  livelihood  by 
action,  or  even  by  the  expression  of  opinions,  un- 
palatable to  the  possessing  classes,  is  more  willing 
to  take  that  risk  than  is  a  property  owner  to  risk 
the  loss  or  even  the  diminution  of  his  property. 
The  proletariat  is  the  class  in  France  that  has  the 
most  moral  courage,  the  most  generosity,  the  least 
respect  for  officials  and  constituted  authority,  the 
most  independence  of  character  and  the  most  initia- 
tive. In  a  word,  it  is,  on  the  whole,  the  finest  class 
of  the  French  people,  and  on  it  the  salvation  of 
France  mainly  depends.  But  it  must  have  the 
co-operation  of  that  section  of  the  intellectual  and 
artistic  bourgeoisie  which  shares  its  qualities  and  is 
still  true  to  the  generous  ideals  of  a  Daumier,  a  Vic- 
tor Hugo,  a  Courbet,  or  an  Anatole  France.  It  will 
also,  I  am  convinced,  have  the  co-operation  of  a 


SMALL  PROPERTY  187 

large  proportion  of  the  peasants,  who  are  beginning 
to  realise  that  they  have  more  in  common  with  the 
proletariat  than  with  the  bourgeoisie,  and  among 
whom  there  is  a  marked  tendency  towards  Social- 
ism. The  demoralising  influence  of  small  property 
may  have  obscured  the  great  qualities  of  the 
French  peasantry,  but  it  has  not  destroyed  them  ; 
above  all,  it  has  left  intact  their  innate  good  sense. 
It  has  to  be  remembered  in  justice  to  the  peasants 
that  it  was  not  merely  concern  for  their  property 
and  the  fear  of  Socialism  that  made  them  join  with 
the  bourgeoisie  against  the  proletariat.  Right 
down  to  the  last  decade  of  the  last  century  the  pro- 
letariat, and  in  particular  the  proletariat  of  Paris, 
was  not  only  revolutionary  and  republican  but  also 
bellicose.  The  wars  for  which  it  clamoured  were 
usually  wars  for  an  ideal,  in  accordance  with  the 
later  revolutionary  tradition;  it  wanted  France  to 
conduct  a  crusade  all  over  Europe  for  the  liberation 
of  oppressed  nations,  such  as  Italy  and  Poland. 
The  good  sense  of  the  peasants  made  them  averse 
from  war  for  any  object,  and  it  was  they  who,  in 
conjunction  with  the  Monarchists,  insisted  on  peace 
in  1871  against  the  Republican  proletariat  of  the 
towns.  Who  will  say  that  they  were  wrong  after 
our  recent  experience  of  a  war  for  ideals — and  its 
results  ? 

There  is,  in  fact,  nearly  if  not  quite  as  much 
avarice  among  certain  classes  of  the  bourgeoisie 
in  France  as  among  the  peasants,  and  it  has 
less  excuse,  for  when  a  man's  livelihood  de- 
pends on  tilling  the  land,  it  is  natural  that 
he  should  guard  the  land  jealously.  It  is 
also  inevitable  that  the  people  with  small  incomes 
derived  from  property  should  cling  desperately  to 
that  propertv;  the  petit  rentier  could  hardly  be 
other  than  what  he  is.  But  in  France  the  rich  are 


188         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

not  as  a  rule  generous,  unless  they  happen  to  be 
Jews.  There  are,  of  course,  very  generous  individuals 
even  among  wealthy  people,  but  they  are  compara- 
tively few.  The  bourgeois  do  not  seem  to  under- 
stand how  unwise  even  from  the  point  of  view  of 
their  own  self-interest  their  stinginess  has  been.  In 
many  respects  the  mentality  of  the  bourgeois  and 
that  of  the  peasant  are  very  much  alike,  and  it  is  only 
natural  that  this  should  be  so,  since  the  majority 
of  the  bourgeois  are  the  descendants  of  peasants. 
At  the  time  of  the  Revolution  the  bourgeoisie  was 
small  in  numbers  and  consisted  of  merchants  and 
shopkeepers ;  the  industrial  revolution  had  not  yet 
created  the  great  manufacturer  and  the  modern 
financial  magnate.  The  grande  bourgeoisie  which 
sprang  from  the  Revolution  was,  as  I  have  already 
said,  mainly  recruited  from  the  peasantry.  During 
the  nineteenth  century  the  bourgeoisie  continued 
to  be  recruited  from  the  sons  of  peasants  immigrat- 
ing into  the  towns  from  the  country  much  more 
than  from  the  proletariat,  for  the  peasants  have 
means  to  give  a  son  a  good  education  and  the  work- 
man has  not.  The  peasant  still  survives  in  the 
bourgeois  even  after  several  generations ;  the  bour- 
geois is  often  a  peasant  demoralised  by  freedom 
from  the  necessity  of  earning  his  living.  For  the 
bourgeois  has  adopted  to  a  great  extent  the  old 
aristocratic  ideal  of  "  independent  means  "  which 
enable  a  man  to  live  without  working.  In  the 
bourgeoisie  the  spender  is  more  highly  esteemed 
than  the  producer.  This  trait  has  been  remarked 
by  an  acute  observer  of  modern  France,  himself  a 
Frenchman,  M.  Albert-Leon  Guerard.  "  French 
social  life,"  he  says,  "  is  still  ruled  by  the  old  feudal 
prejudice  that  manual  labour  is  servile  and  even 
that  any  gainful  occupation  is  demeaning.  The 
French  ideal  is  not  so  much  wealth  as  freedom  from 


SMALL  PROPERTY  189 

ignoble  toil.  We  need  hardly  say  that  this  concep- 
tion does  not  spring  from  laziness,  for  French  in- 
dustry is  proverbial.  Throughout  the  nineteenth 
century  every  small  manufacturer  or  tradesman 
aspired  to  the  moment  when  he  could  abandon  his 
business,  which  he  really  loved,  and  on  a  minimum 
competency  set  up  as  a  gentleman.'' 1  This  is  pro- 
foundly true,  but  I  cannot  follow  M.  Guerard  when 
he  attributes  to  "  this  aristocratic  prejudice  which 
ranks  the  spender  higher  than  the  toiler  "  the  fact 
that  there  is  an  unusually  large  "  disinterested  and 
cultured  public  "  in  France.  It  is  true  that  the 
disinterested  and  cultured  public  is  unusually  large, 
but  the  very  last  class  that  can  be  called  either  dis- 
interested or  cultured  is  the  class  of  petits  rentiers, 
who  have  set  up  as  gentlemen  on  a  minimum  com- 
petency. The  large  disinterested  and  cultured 
public  is  recruited  chiefly  from  people  that  work 
with  their  brains  or  their  hands,  not  from  the  com- 
mercial bourgeoisie,  whether  still  actively  engaged 
in  business  or  in  retirement.  And  just  as  the  Jews 
are  the  most  generous  as  a  rule  of  the  wealthy 
class,  so  they  are  on  the  whole  the  most  disin- 
terested and  cultured.  The  majority  of  the  rich 
men  in  Paris  that  are  really  interested  in  literature 
or  collect  pictures  and  other  works  of  art  with  real 
taste  and  appreciation  are  Jews ;  yet  the  Jews  are 
a  very  small  minority  of  the  French  population, 
much  less  numerous  than  in  England,  still  more  so 
than  in  Germany.  Moreover,  the  proportion  of 
Jews  among  eminent  men  of  science,  university 
professors  and  sovants,  and  men  of  distinction  in  all 
the  learned  professions  is  extraordinarily  large  in 
France.  The  Jews  have  not  the  petit  bourgeois 
mentality,  which  is  ftiat  of  a  peasant  demoralised, 

1  "  French  Civilisation  in  the  Nineteenth  Century  "  (T.  Fisher 
Unwin,  1914),  page  176, 


190         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

and  they  have  a  remarkable  faculty  of  combining 
what  is  called  the  artistic  temperament  with  prac- 
tical capacity,  such  as  is  possessed  to  the  same 
degree  by  no  other  race.  The  anti-Semite,  who 
represents  the  Jew  as  a  man  with  no  interest  in  life 
but  that  of  amassing  money,  makes  a  fundamental 
mistake.  It  is  just  because  the  Jew  is  not  that 
as  a  rule  that  the  gentile  Frenchman,  of  whom  the 
charge  is  more  often  true,  sometimes  finds  it  so 
hard  to  hold  his  own  against  him. 

If,  indeed,  the  parsimonious  thrift  of  the  small 
French  bourgeois  were  due,  as  M.  Guerard  seems 
to  think,  merely  to  a  desire  to  secure  an  indepen- 
dence which  would  give  leisure  for  intellectual  pur- 
suits, one  could  only  commend  it.  But  I  am  afraid 
that  that  is  not  the  case.  The  desire  to  become  a 
gentleman — a  rentier — is  not  at  all  the  same  thing. 
Certainly  a  man  is  wiser  to  retire  from  business  at 
an  age  when  he  can  still  enjoy  life  rather  than  go 
on  merely  for  the  sake  of  amassing  more  money  like 
the  American  millionaire.  But,  unfortunately, 
when  a  man  up  to  the  age  of  fifty  or  more  has  had  no 
interest  in  life  but  that  of  laboriously  adding  one 
sou  to  another,  he  is  not  likely  to  acquire  another 
at  that  age.  It  is  probably  because  the  American 
millionaire  recognises  this  that  he  does  not  retire. 
But  although  the  American  business  man  has  too 
often  no  interest  in  life  but  that  of  making  money, 
his  life  is  less  sordid  than  that  of  the  French  petit 
bourgeois ;  for  he  makes  money  while  the  other  only 
saves  it — there  is  a  great  difference  between  the 
two.  The  making  of  money  as  it  is  understood  in 
America  is  itself  an  exciting  pursuit,  which  has  all 
the  attractions  of  gambling,  and  the  American  at 
least  spends  while  he  is  making;  he  is  the  least 
avaricious  person  in  the  world,  and  it  is  far  more 
the  excitement  of  making  the  money  than  its  actual 


SMALL  PROPERTY  191 

possession  which  attracts  him.  The  tales  of  Ameri- 
can business  romance  published  in  American  maga- 
zines reveal  a  career  as  venturesome  and  exciting 
as  that  of  a  highwayman.  There  is  nothing  venture- 
some or  exciting  in  the  life  of  a  small  French  trades- 
man engaged  in  piling  up  sous,  and  when  his 
ambition  is  attained  and  he  retires  to  become 
a  small  rentier,  he  usually  leads  a  life  of 
dismal  vacuity,  for  the  only  interest  has  gone  out 
of  it.  He  remains  the  incarnation  of  the  petit 
bourgeois  spirit. 

That  spirit  is,  in  fact,  to  too  great  an  extent  the 
spirit  of  the  French  bourgeoisie  as  a  whole.  The 
bourgeoisie,  since  it  has  been  the  master  of  France, 
has  committed  many  political  mistakes,  but,  if  its 
power  is  now  irretrievably  jeopardised,  as  I  am  con- 
vinced that  it  is,  perhaps  its  meanness  and  stingi- 
ness are  even  more  to  blame.  The  French  bour- 
geoisie has,  I  believe,  committed  suicide  as  surely 
as  did  the  noblesse  of  the  eighteenth  century.  Even 
the  war  has  not  made  the  bourgeois  loosen  their 
purse-strings.  "  These  people  are  quite  willing  to 
let  their  sons  be  killed,"  said  an  eminent  French- 
man two  or  three  years  ago,  "  but  you  mustn't  ask 
them  for  five  francs."  It  was  a  severe  judgment, 
but  there  was  too  much  justification  for  it.  At 
the  beginning  of  the  war  a  national  fund  was  opened 
in  France  as  in  England  for  the  relief  of  sufferers 
from  the  war;  the  total  of  the  subscriptions  never 
exceeded  more  than  two  or  three  hundred  thousand 
pounds,  of  which  the  greater  part  was  given  by 
Jews,  and  the  fund  simply  fizzled  out  long  before 
the  war  was  over.  In  England  millions  of  pounds 
were  raised  for  the  same  object.  The  wealthy 
classes  in  France  have  never  been  willing  to  pay 
their  fair  share  of  taxation ;  their  resistance  to  the 
income  tax  was  an  incredible  manifestation  of 


192         MY  SECOND   COUNTRY 

selfishness  and  avarice.  Even  the  war  did  not 
diminish  that  resistance;  while  the  bourgeoisie 
made  a  louder  profession  of  patriotic  sentiments 
than  any  other  class  of  the  community  and 
clamoured  more  consistently  than  any  other  for 
war  to  the  bitter  end,  it  obstinately  refused  to  pay 
for  the  war  and  continued  as  before  to  shift  the 
burden  of  taxation  on  to  the  backs  of  the  prole- 
tariat in  the  form  of  indirect  taxes.  Even  when  an 
income  tax  was  at  last  imposed  its  rate  was  ridi- 
culously low,  and  the  rich  have  succeeded  for  the 
most  part  in  evading  it  to  a  great  extent  with  the 
complicity  of  the  Government.  It  was  because  no 
Government  during  the  war  dared  touch  the  pockets 
of  the  bourgeoisie  that  a  financial  policy  was 
adopted  which  had  led  to  chaos  and  ruin.  The 
bourgeoisie  had  counted  that  Germany  would  pay 
for  everything ;  now  that  that  illusion  is  dispelled, 
it  finds  itself  face  to  face  with  a  financial  situation 
which  may  well  involve  its  own  ruin,  for  the  situa- 
tion is  insoluble,  and  insoluble  problems  are  apt  to 
lead  to  revolutions.  If,  as  some  people  say,  the 
generosity  of  wealthy  Jews  is  due  to  a  shrewd  ap- 
preciation of  the  necessity  of  paying  ransom,  at 
least  it  shows  their  superior  intelligence.  Had  the 
wealthy  French  bourgeoisie  been  equally  intelli- 
gent and,  in  default  of  generous  sentiments,  been 
driven  to  generosity  by  the  instinct  of  self-preserva- 
tion— had  it  been  willing  to  surrender  the  half  or 
even  the  quarter  to  avoid  losing  the  whole — it 
might  have  averted  the  fate  which  r-ow  awaits  it. 
In  no  other  country  in  the  world  is  the  bourgeoisie 
so  bitterly  hated  by  the  proletariat  as  in  France, 
and  in  no  other  country  is  there  so  much  justifica- 
tion for  that  hate.  The  bourgeoisie  of  the  nine- 
teenth century,  like  the  noblesse  of  the  eighteenth, 
has  thought  only  of  its  privileges  and  its  property ; 


SMALL  PROPERTY  193 

it  has  shut  its  eyes  and  ears  to  the  evidence  of 
social  injustice  and  to  the  demands  of  the  workers 
for  a  better  life;  it  has  not  even  been  willing  to 
throw  the  sops  of  charity  to  the  non-possessing 
classes.  As  surely  as  the  noblesse  of  the  eighteenth 
century  it  will  pay  the  penalty  of  its  avarice,  its 
selfishness  and  its  stupidity. 

If  the  grands  bourgeois  are  not  generous,  the 
petits  bourgeois  are  even  less  so;  they  could  not  be 
if  they  would,  for  they  cannot  afford  it.  After 
thirteen  years'  experience  of  France  it  is  my  delibe- 
rate conviction  that  private  property  in  the  means 
of  production  is  even  more  pernicious  when  it  is 
distributed  in  many  hands  than  when  it  is  concen- 
trated in  a  few.  To  begin  with,  the  number  of 
people  demoralised  by  living  on  the  community 
instead  of  by  their  own  labour  is  greater.  In  the 
second  place,  the  extension  of  private  property  by 
producing  a  large  number  of  small  fixed  incomes 
promotes  thrift,  which  inevitably  leads  to  the  love 
of  money.  People  are  thrifty  because  they  aspire 
to  become  property  owners,  and  when  they  have 
attained  that  ambition  they  are  more  thrifty  than 
ever  in  order  to  keep  what  they  have  got.  The 
love  of  money  is  the  curse  of  France.  It  shows  itself 
in  many  ways  besides  those  that  have  been  men- 
tioned— for  instance,  in  that  incurable  propensity 
of  so  many  French  people  for  thinking  that  money 
is  the  only  inducement  that  will  make  anybody  do 
anything  and  for  refusing  to  believe  that  any  action 
can  have  disinterested  motives.  The  people  that 
recklessly  and  indiscriminately  accuse  all  politi- 
cians and  judges  of  being  corrupt  and  all  persons 
that  do  public  or  philanthropic  work  of  haying  a 
financial  interest  in  it  are  often  only  attributing  to 
others  the  conduct  of  which  they  feel  that  they 
themselves  would  be  capable  in  the  same  circum- 

o 


194         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

stances.  Thirdly,  owners  of  large  property  have 
at  least  the  possibility  of  dealing  generously  with 
their  tenants  or  employees  if  they  wish;  small 
property  owners  have  not.  The  Parisian  landlord 
is  the  most  mean  and  rapacious  that  I  have  ever 
encountered.  It  is  usually  difficult  to  get  him  to 
do  the  most  ordinary  repairs ;  he  exacts  conditions 
exceeding  even  the  monstrous  rights  given  him  by 
the  law,  and  when  you  pay  your  rent  he  will  ask 
you  for  a  penny  for  the  receipt  stamp.  Many 
French  landlords  are  not  in  a  position  to  keep  their 
houses  in  repair  because  they  have  no  means  be- 
yond the  rent  of  perhaps  a  single  house.  I  have 
known  large  landlords  in  England  and  I  have 
known  small  ones  in  France ;  I  prefer  the  former. 
Heaven  help  the  unfortunate  tenant  that  falls  into 
the  hands  of  a  retired  French  grocer  turned 
house-owner.  I  do  not  know  what  there  is  in 
the  grocery  trade  that  makes  its  effect  on 
character  particularly  demoralising,  but  there  is 
certainly  something  in  the  French  use  of  the  term 
<k  mentalite  d'epicier." 

After  all,  however,  the  wealthy  landlord  in 
France  is  nearly  as  bad  as  the  poorer  one,  for,  as 
I  have  said,  the  grand  bourgeois  is  apt  to  have  a 
petit  bourgeois  mentality.  It  was  a  rich  man — a 
typical  representative  of  the  bien-pensant  and  re- 
actionary grande  bourgeoisie  with  connections  in 
the  noblesse — who,  when  I  objected  to  the  absence 
of  a  bath-room  in  an  expensive  flat,  replied  that  he 
could  not  understand  what  anybody  could  want 
with  so  useless  a  luxury.  The  same  gentleman 
strongly  objected  to  repainting  the  flat,  which,  as 
I  ascertained,  had  not  been  touched  for  at  least 
twenty  years,  and  it  looked  like  it.  It  is  not  sur- 
prising that  the  hatred  of  the  people  of  Paris  for 
the  bourgeoisie  in  general  is  multiplied  fourfold  in 


SMALL  PROPERTY  195 

the  case  of  owners  of  house  property — the  Vultures, 
as  they  are  commonly  called.  The  dwellings  in 
which  the  State  allows  Parisian  landlords  to  put  a 
large  proportion  of  the  proletariat  and  the  poorer 
bourgeoisie  are  a  disgrace  to  a  civilised  country. 
The  concierge  is  in  too  many  cases  a  worthy  agent 
of  the  landlord — obsequious  and  obliging  to  bour- 
geois tenants  provided  that  their  Christmas-boxes 
and  other  tips  are  adequate,  hard  and  disagreeable 
to  poor  tenants.  That  is  not,  of  course,  true  of  all 
concierges;  I  have  known  delightful  ones.  The 
position  of  a  concierge  is  no  doubt  very  difficult — - 
he  or  she  is  a  sort  of  buffer  between  the  landlord 
and  the  tenant  and  sometimes  gets  the  kicks  of 
both.  The  system  is  a  bad  one  :  the  concierge 
ought  to  be  a  porter  at  the  service  of  the  tenants, 
but  in  fact  he  or  she  is  the  servant  of  the  landlord 
installed  to  spy  upon  the  tenants  and  report  on 
their  behaviour,  employed  by  the  landlord  to  con- 
vey any  disagreeable  communication  that  the  latter 
may  have  to  make  to  a  tenant.  At  the  same  time 
the  concierge  is  expected  to  observe  elaborate  regu- 
lations and  even  to  possess  a  keen  psychological 
insight.  In  all  apartment  houses  of  any  preten- 
sions which  have  a  front  staircase  (grand  escalier) 
and  a  back  staircase  (escalier  de  service),  the  unfor- 
tunate concierge  has  to  possess  remarkable  judg- 
ment if  he  is  to  decide  the  momentous  question  of 
the  particular  staircase  to  be  used  by  any  given 
person.  In  general,  nobody  must  carry  a  parcel 
up  the  sacred  front  staircase,  but  a  parcel  is  some- 
times carried  by  a  person  of  undoubted  social  posi- 
tion, and  various  professional  men  in  France  are 
accustomed  to  go  about  with  large  portfolios.  The 
concierge  of  a  house  in  wEich  I  once  had  a  flat  was 
so  bullied  by  the  landlord  about  the  proper  use  of 
the  staircase  that  he  was  always  losing  his  head,  and 

o  2 


196         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

one  day  sent  up  the  back  staircase  to  the  kitchen 
door  a  friend  who  was  coming  to  dine  with  me 
because,  being  not  at  all  well  off,  he  happened  to 
be  rather  shabbily  dressed.  The  same  concierge 
was  the  victim  of  traps  laid  for  him  by  the  land- 
lord, who  used  to  send  people  to  the  house  carrying 
inoffensive-looking  parcels  in  order  to  see  whether 
the  concierge  would  allow  them  up  the  front  stair- 
case. So  on  the  whole  I  am  rather  inclined  to  pity 
the  concierges  of  the  more  expensive  flats,  from 
whom  the  tenants  suffer  little ;  for  myself,  I  have 
always  been  on  excellent  terms  with  my  concierge. 
But  it  is  often  otherwise  in  cheap  flats  inhabited  by 
the  poor ;  there  the  concierge  is  frequently  a  tyrant, 
and  the  tenants  sometimes  have  to  appease  their 
ruler  by  tips  far  larger  in  proportion  to  their 
means  and  their  rent  than  those  given  by  the  bour- 
geoisie. The  landlord  through  the  concierge  exer- 
cises a  minute  supervision  of  the  conduct  and 
private  life  of  the  tenants.  The  great  crime  is  to 
have  a  child — to  have  more  than  one  is  to  be 
unworthy  of  any  respectable  dwelling.  People 
have  to  conceal  the  fact  that  they  have  children 
until  they  have  got  into  the  flat.  To  a  concierge— 
or  rather  to  a  landlord — a  child  ranks  with  dogs, 
cats,  parrots  and  other  noxious  animals.  A  friend 
of  mine,  when  she  was  visiting  a  flat  to  let,  having 
assured  the  concierge,  in  reply  to  a  question,  that 
she  had  no  child,  was  immediately  asked  whether 
she  was  expecting  one ;  she  happened,  moreover, 
not  to  be  married.  No  doubt  the  landlords  that 
make  these  rules  belong  to  committees  for  further- 
ing the  increase  of  the  population — provided  that 
there  is  no  subscription.  In  any  case  it  is  probable 
that  they  lament  the  decay  of  morality  caused  by 
the  neglect  of  the  precepts  of  the  Church,  which 
shows  itself  in  the  refusal  of  the  proletariat  to  have 


SMALL   PROPERTY  197 

large  families.  For  the  French  bourgeois  with 
bourgeois  ideas  is  as  hypocritical  as  the  British. 
The  old  noblesse,  with  all  its  faults  and  crimes, 
was  less  repugnant  than  these  people  whose  only 
sincere  sentiment  is  a  belief  in  the  sacred  rights  of 
property. 

If  the  demoralising  effects  of  property  on  the 
character  are  more  evident  and  more  widespread  in 
France  than  elsewhere,  the  system  of  small  property 
is  to  blame.  A  man  who  has  had  plenty  of  money 
all  his  life  and  has  never  had  to  think  about  it  may, 
and  often  does,  lead  a  perfectly  useless  existence, 
but  he  is  not  likely  to  be  sordid  and  petty.  On  the 
other  hand,  however  praiseworthy  may  be  the  ob- 
jects of  thrift,  it  must  inevitably  engender  avarice. 
An  existence  spent  in  laboriously  accumulating 
money  a  penny  at  a  time  is  a  petty  and  sordid 
existence  and  produces  a  petty  and  sordid 
character.  Why,  indeed,  need  one  labour  the  point, 
since  the  fact  is  admitted  by  all  thoughtful  French- 
men ?  The  whole  of  French  literature  in  the  nine- 
teenth century  from  Balzac  to  Anatole  France  is 
filled  with  examples  of  the  meanness  and  avarice 
produced  by  small  property.  Guy  de  Maupassant 
and  Emile  Zola  have  shown  us  what  small  property 
has  done  for  the  character  of  the  peasants ;  Octave 
Mirbeau  has  exposed  with  bitter  irony  the  avidity 
and  hypocrisy  to  be  found  among  the  bourgeois. 
The  spirit  is  the  same — the  spirit  of  a  man  whose 
main  object  in  life  is  to  accumulate  a  little  hoard 
and  to  defend  it  jealously  when  he  has  accumulated 
it.  That  meanness  and  avarice  are  not  innate  in 
the  French  character  is  shown  by  the  proletariat 
and  by  the  many  other  French  people  that  have 
not  come  under  the  demoralising  influence  or 
have  emancipated  themselves  from  it.  These 
vices  are  prevalent  in  France  only  because 


198         MY   SECOND  COUNTRY 

the  cause  produces  its  effect :   the  cause  is  small 
property. 

The  economic  results  of  small  property  have  been 
as  bad  as  its  results  on  character,  of  which  they  are 
to  some  extent  the  outcome.  The  lack  of  enter- 
prise which  is  so  conspicuous  in  France  is  mainly 
the  result  of  timidity — of  the  fear  of  taking  any 
risk.  Napoleon  said  that  tHe  English  were  a  nation 
of  shopkeepers;  a  hostile  critic  might  say  of  the 
French  that  they  were  a  nation  of  small  shop- 
keepers. The  one  statement  would  be  as  unjust  a 
generalisation  as  the  other,  but  each  has  some 
foundation.  The  French  are  as  a  rule  successful 
only  in  a  small  way  of  business;  nobody  knows 
better  than  they — and  this  is  true  particularly  of 
the  women — how  to  make  a  little  shop  pay  by  rigor- 
ously watching  over  the  expenditure  of  every 
penny.  But  in  big  business  they  are  less  successful, 
because  they  so  often  cannot  bring  themselves  to 
risk  money  even  when  the  probability  of  profiting 
by  the  expenditure  is  so  great  that  the  risk  is  infini- 
tesimal. This  is  the  secret  of  the  predominance  of 
Jews  and  foreigners — especially  Germans  before  the 
war — in  French  business  affairs.  A  Jew  is  far  too 
shrewd  not  to  understand  that  one  cannot  make 
money  without  spending  it,  and  he  is  always  pre- 
pared to  spend  it  wKen  he  sees  a  good  chance  of  a 
profitable  return.  That  is  equally  true  of  the 
German  business  man,  and  also,  of  course,  of  the 
English  and  American.  Unless  and  until  the 
French  learn  that  lesson  they  will  continue  to  be 
cut  out  by  foreigners  in  their  own  country.  Before 
the  war  the  foreigners  were  mostly  Germans,  for 
the  simple  reason  that  the  Germans,  having 
few  colonies  to  go  to,  emigrated  to  other 
countries.  In  the  immediate  future  no  doubt  it 
will  be  difficult  for  Germans  to  settle  in  France, 


SMALL  PROPERTY  199 

but   their  places   will   be  taken   by  English   and 
Americans. 

Another  example  of  this  fear  of  taking  any  risk 
is  the  reluctance  of  French  investors  to  find  money 
for  industrial  undertakings  in  their  own  country. 
Even  during  the  war,  when  huge  profits  were  being 
made  on  munitions  and  other  army  supplies,  people 
that  had,  as  they  ought  not  to  have  had,  Govern- 
ment contracts  in  their  pockets  which  absolutely 
secured  them  large  profits  on  the  supply  of  material 
which  they  had  not  the  means  to  manufacture, 
could  not  find  the  necessary  capital  in  France  and 
had  to  go  to  England  or  America  for  it.  The 
French  investor  will  look  only  at  Government 
securities  and  trustee  investments.  Therefore  the 
French  investors  poured  into  the  coffers  of  the  Tsar 
millions  which  would  have  been  better  employed 
in  the  development  of  their  own  country.  Their 
unpleasant  experience  in  regard  to  the  Russian 
loans,  which  has  shown  that  Government  securities 
are  not  always  safe,  is  a  wholesome  lesson.  If  this 
experience  be  turned  to  account,  it  may  have  bene- 
ficial results  which  will  to  some  extent  compensate 
for  the  heavy  loss  of  about  two-thirds  of  French 
foreign  investments.  Frenchmen  have  sometimes 
taken  pride  in  the  fact  that  they  have  been  the 
bankers  of  the  world,  that,  in  the  words  of 
M.  Guerard,  "the  more  go-ahead  nations — America, 
England,  Germany — have  all  been  compelled,  in 
time  of  stress,  to  borrow  from  the  inexhaustible 
'  woollen  stockings'  of  the  French  peasants."  It 
is  a  profound  mistake.  What  the  French  have 
been  doing  is  to  facilitate  the  development  of  other 
countries  while  they  neglected  that  of  their  own. 
Or  rather  that  has  been  done  by  the  property 
owners  in  France,  who  do  not  seem  to  understand 

\'Op.  cit.,  p.  177. 


200         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

that  capital  is  much  more  useful  to  a  country  when 
it  is  directly  employed  in  production  than  when  it 
is  lent  to  a  foreign  Government  at  three  or  four  per 
cent.  While  they  have  been  lending  money  to 
other  countries,  Germans  and  other  foreigners  have 
been  employing  their  capital  to  develop  the 
resources  of  France  for  their  own  profit.  Herein, 
as  has  been  said  in  a  previous  chapter,  is  to  be 
found  the  explanation  of  the  exceptional  power  of 
high  finance  in  France. 

The  timidity  of  the  French  bourgeois  has  also  led 
him  into  a  hide-bound  conservatism  in  business  and 
other  practical  matters.  French  business  methods 
are  just  about  a  century  behind  the  times. 
How  can  it  be  otherwise  ?  One  always  takes  certain 
risks  in  making  a  change.  An  American  friend  of 
mine  in  Paris  related  to  me  an  amusing  example  of 
the  conviction  of  most  French  business  men  that 
any  change  in  the  methods  of  their  great-grand- 
fathers is  almost  unthinkable.  He  made  a  proposal 
to  a  number  of  leading  men  in  a  certain  trade  in 
Paris,  the  very  trade  in  which  one  would  most 
expect  to  find  intelligent  people,  and  undoubtedly 
the  persons  in  question  are  intelligent — I  know  seve- 
ral of  them  and  can  vouch  for  the  fact.  A  meeting 
was  arranged  between  my  American  friend  and  the 
others,  at  which  he  expounded  his  scheme  in  full 
detail.  There  was  a  general  agreement  that  it  was  a 
good  one  and  likely  to  prove  profitable  to  all  con- 
cerned, but  its  author  was  met  by  an  insuperable 
objection  :  "  Ce  n'est  pas  dans  nos  mceurs  "'  —it  is 
not  in  accordance  with  our  customs.  The  American 
was  so  taken  aback  that  he  replied  with  perhaps 
somewhat  impolite  abruptness  :  "  Then  you  had 
better  change  them."  The  curious  thing  is  that 
Parisians,  at  any  rate,  have  an  exaggerated  love 
of  novelty  in  many  regards  and  like  nothing  better 


SMALL  PROPERTY  201 

than  a  new  fashion  or  custom,  but  business  tradi- 
tion is  like  the  Ark  of  the  Covenant — it  must  not  be 
touched.  Even  some  of  the  most  enlightened 
business  men  in  Paris  are  astonishingly  insular; 
they  do  not  even  know  the  names  of  important  firms 
in  their  own  line  of  business  in  other  countries,  still 
less  appreciate  the  possibilities  of  dealing  with 
them.  I  remember  making,  at  the  request  of  a 
friend  in  New  York,  a  suggestion  to  a  friend  in 
Paris,  who  is  a  leading  representative  of  the  busi- 
ness in  which  both  were  engaged,  a  suggestion 
which  seemed  to  me  obviously  to  the  advantage  of 
both.  My  Parisian  friend  agreed  at  once — as  a 
favour  to  me ;  he  honestly  did  not  understand  that 
there  could  be  any  advantage  to  him  in  doing  so. 
Important  French  firms  are  sometimes  incredibly 
parsimonious  :  I  have  heard  of  cases  in  which  firms 
hesitated  about  sending  samples  abroad  and  pub- 
lishers even  demurred  to  sending  a  free  copy  of  a 
book  to  a  foreign  publisher  who  proposed  to  have  it 
translated.  These  are  but  examples  of  the  dread 
of  risking  money  even  if  it  be  only  a  question  of  a 
franc  or  two ;  of  course  the  sample  might  not  have 
led  to  any  orders,  and  the  foreign  publisher  might 
have  decided  after  all  not  to  translate  the  book. 
The  ordinary  French  business  man  will  spend  a 
franc  if  he  is  quite  certain  that  the  expenditure  will 
give  him  a  profit  of  ten  centimes,  but  the  possibility 
of  losing  the  franc  is  more  than  he  can  bear.  Of 
course  there  are  many  exceptions — there  are  French 
business  men  who  are  enterprising  and  do  their 
best  to  introduce  new  methods,  sometimes  a  diffi- 
cult matter ;  but  they  are  in  a  minority,  and  a  large 
proportion  of  them  are  Jews. 

One  thing  that  strikes  a  foreigner  about  French 
business  methods  is  the  waste  of  time  that  they 
involve.  Presumably  from  a  fear  of  committing 


202          MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

themselves,  French  business  men  have  a  rooted 
objection  to  writing  letters,  and  insist  on  an  inter- 
view to  settle  a  trivial  matter  which  in  England 
would  be  easily  disposed  of  by  correspondence  or 
on  the  telephone.  As  French  politeness  requires 
that  the  first  quarter  of  an  hour  of  a  business  inter- 
view shall  be  spent  in  inquiries  after  the  health  of 
the  respective  families  and  general  small  talk,  a 
great  deal  of  time  is  taken  up  in  this  way.  The 
amount  of  unnecessary  time  and  labour  expended 
in  France  is  enormous ;  business  hours  in  Paris  are 
much  longer  than  in  London,  but  no  more  is  done 
in  the  day.  An  antediluvian  system  of  book- 
keeping prevails  in  France,  where  the  simple 
method  of  paying  all  receipts  into  the  bank  and 
making  all  payments  by  cheque  has  never  taken 
root.  Although  cheques  are  beginning  to  be  more 
used,  it  is  still  the  practice,  even  in  large  business 
concerns,  to  put  the  receipts  into  a  safe  in  cash  and 
notes  and  make  payments  out  of  them  even  for  large 
amounts.  The  complication  that  this  system 
causes  in  the  accounts  and  the  opportunities  that 
it  gives  for  embezzlement  may  easily  be  imagined. 
Dishonest  cashiers  are  more  common  in  France 
than  in  England  for  the  simple  reason  that  cashiers 
have  more  opportunities  of,  and  temptations  to, 
dishonesty.  They  are  miserably  paid,  have  large 
sums  of  money  in  cash  always  in  their  hands,  and, 
if  they  yield  to  temptation,  the  complicated  system 
of  book-keeping  makes  it  easy  for  them  to  conceal 
their  depredations  for  a  considerable  time.  The 
system  of  book-keeping  is  just  as  old-fashioned  and 
complicated  in  banks  as  elsewhere,  and  seems  to 
have  been  devised  with  the  intention  of  making 
fraud  difficult  to  discover,  with  the  result  that 
bank  clerks  are  always  disappearing  with  large 
sums  in  cash.  There  have  been  several  sensational 


SMALL   PROPERTY  203 

cases  of  this  kind  :  one  gentleman,  who  had  gone  off 
with  several  thousand  pounds,  was  arrested 
on  a  yacht  on  which  he  was  making  a  tour 
of  the  world.  The  disinclination  of  Frenchmen  to 
use  cheques  is  an  example  of  the  curious  passion 
for  actually  handling  money  and  also  of  the 
timidity  which  fears  to  trust  a  bank.  Many  men 
with  large  incomes  have  no  banking  account,  and 
if  by  chance  they  receive  a  cheque  will  cash  it 
over  the  counter ;  they  think  nothing  of  keeping  a 
couple  of  thousand  pounds  in  their  house  or  of 
carrying  about  a  couple  of  hundred  in  their  pockets. 
I  have  seen  a  man  give  a  thousand-franc  note  to  a 
waiter  to  pay  for  drinks  in  a  cafe.  This  was  done  in 
a  cafe  on  the  Grand  Boulevard  on  the  day  of  the 
general  mobilisation  in  1914,  and  the  waiter,  who 
happened  to  be  a  German,  was  never  seen  again, 
nor  was  the  thousand-franc  note.  It  is  this  unwise 
habit  of  keeping  large  sums  of  money  in  the  house 
or  on  the  person  that  makes  murders  for  gain, 
burglaries,  and  street  attacks  so  common  in  France. 
The  peasants  still  keep  their  savings  as  a  rule,  if 
not  in  a  stocking,  at  any  rate  in  a  box  under  their 
beds,  for  they  will  not  trust  them  even  to  the 
Government  savings  bank.  The  result  is  that  every 
house  in  a  French  village  is  worth  breaking  into. 
In  nearly  every  village  there  are  one  or  two  old 
women  living  alone  who  are  known  to  have  a  few 
hundred  francs  in  the  house.  Some  day  or  other  the 
ne'er-do-well  of  the  village  can  no  longer  resist  the 
temptation  to  possess  himself  of  the  few  hundred 
francs,  and  when  the  old  woman  calls  for  help,  he 
knocks  her  on  the  head  to  avoid  discovery.  That 
is  the  simple  history  of  the  typical  murder  so 
deplorably  prevalent  in  French  country  districts. 
In  the  towns  the  chances  are  that  any  bourgeois 
flat,  even  a  poor  one,  will  contain  enough  money 


204         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

to  make  burglary  worth  while,  and  that  any 
well-dressed  man  in  the  street  will  have  at  least 
twenty  pounds  on  his  person — possibly  a  great 
deal  more. 

The  refusal  to  make  use  of  the  banking  system 
and  make  payments  by  cheque  has  other  grave  in- 
conveniences. It  is  a  heavy  expense  to  the  State, 
which  is  obliged  to  mint  a  much  larger  quantity  of 
coins  than  would  otherwise  be  the  case ;  the  amount 
of  coinage  in  circulation  at  any  given  moment  in 
France  is  several  times  larger  than  in  England. 
Since  the  war  the  Government  has  been  appealing 
to  the  public  to  use  cheques  as  much  as  possible, 
but  the  appeals  do  not  seem  to  have  had  much 
effect.  People  that  wish  to  use  cheques  often  find 
a  difficulty  in  getting  them  accepted,  either  because 
the  person  to  whom  a  cheque  is  offered  has  no 
banking  account  and  objects  to  the  trouble  of 
cashing  it,  or  because  he  is  suspicious  of  any  pay- 
ment not  made  in  specie.  Every  lease  in  France 
contains  the  stipulation  that  the  rent  must  be  paid 
in  gold  and  silver  coins,  but  there  are  now  many 
landlords  who  accept  cheques.  These  mediaeval 
methods  of  payment  make  the  collection  of  debts  a 
complicated  affair  involving  much  useless  labour. 
In  England  a  tradesman  sends  an  account  to  his 
customer  and  waits  a  reasonable  time  for  a  cheque. 
In  France  he  has  to  keep  employees  to  carry  round 
receipted  bills  to  the  customers'  houses  to  collect 
the  money,  and  they  often  call  half  a  dozen  times 
before  they  get  it,  as  the  customer  may  be  out  or 
unwilling  to  pay.  As  for  the  Government,  although 
it  urges  people  to  use  cheques,  it  does  not  set  the 
example ;  if  one  has  to  be  paid  anything  by  any 
public  office,  one  has  to  go  and  fetch  the  money. 
The  same  is  the  case  in  regard  to  all  public  services, 
such  as  gas  companies,  whose  methods  are  even 


SMALL  PROPERTY  205 

more  absurd  than  those  of  business  in  general. 
Before  one  can  get  gas  or  electric  light,  one  has  to 
pay  several  visits  to  the  office  of  the  company  and 
finally  to  sign  three  copies  of  a  long  agreement. 
The  affection  for  what  the  French  appropriately 
call  "  paperasses  "  (waste  paper)  on  the  part  of  all 
authorities,  public  bodies,  and  Government  offices 
is,  of  course,  a  positive  disease.  A  Frenchman 
spends  half  his  life  in  signing  papers,  apparently  for 
no  object  but  that  of  providing  easy  employment 
for  an  army  of  otherwise  useless  officials. 

It  must  be  admitted  that  the  French  banks  have 
done  nothing  to  induce  people  to  use  them  to  a 
greater  extent.  The  French  banking  system  is  as 
obsolete  as  French  business  methods.  There  is  no 
clearing  house,  and  a  cheque  paid  into  one  bank  in 
Paris  is  carried  by  a  messenger,  called  the  "  garcon 
de  recette,"  to  the  bank  on  which  it  is  drawn  and 
cashed  over  the  counter ;  if  the  cheque  be  drawn  on 
a  provincial  bank,  the  bank  into  which  it  is  paid 
sends  it  to  its  agent  in  the  place  in  question,  who 
treats  it  in  the  same  way.  These  bank  messengers, 
who  are  always  going  about  with  large  sums  of 
money  in  their  satchels,  are  marked  out  as  the 
victims  of  aggression,  especially  as  they  wear  a 
uniform  and  a  cocked  hat  to  enable  the  apaches 
to  identify  them  at  once.  It  is  their  business  also 
to  collect  bills  when  they  become  due.  The  pay- 
ment of  accounts  by  bills  at  three  months  is  a  very 
common  practice  in  France.  If  the  drawer  of  the 
bill  has  a  banking  account  he  may  make  it  payable 
at  his  bank,  but  that  is  seldom  the  case ;  as  a  rule 
the  person  in  whose  favour  the  bill  is  drawn  gives  it 
to  a  bank  to  collect,  and  it  is  presented  when  it 
becomes  due  at  the  house  of  the  drawer.  The  bills 
collected  by  the  bank  messengers  either  at  banks  or 
elsewhere  may  easily  amount  to  several  thousand 


206          MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

pounds  in  a  single  day,  and  with  such  sums  they 
walk  about  the  streets  of  Paris.  A  trick  which  has 
more  than  once  been  resorted  to  is  the  following : 
two  accomplices  agree  that  one  shall  draw  a  bill  on 
the  other,  and  when  the  bank  messenger  comes  to 
present  the  bill  they  knock  him  on  the  head  and 
empty  his  satchel.  It  is  quite  simple.  French  banks 
pay  interest  on  current  accounts,  but  they  also 
deduct  a  small  commission  from  every  cheque  paid 
into  the  account ;  the  result  at  the  end  of  every  six 
months  is  an  account  of  the  interest  and  commission 
on  several  foolscap  pages,  resulting  in  a  balance  on 
one  side  or  the  other  of  frs.4.85.  It  does  not  seem 
to  have  occurred  to  any  bank  that  this  is  so  much 
waste  labour,  and  that  it  would  be  much  simpler 
to  suppress  both  interest  and  commission.  By  law 
a  French  bank  is  not  obliged  to  honour  the  cheques 
of  a  client  in  any  one  day  to  a  greater  aggregate 
amount  than  frs.  10,000  (£400),  unless  the  client  has 
given  at  least  two  days'  notice  of  his!  inten- 
tion to  draw  to  a  larger  amount.  In  practice 
many  banks  waive  this  right  and  honour  any 
cheques  presented  for  which  there  is  provision,  but 
all  do  not.  The  consequence  is  that  some  business 
firms  send  to  their  bank  every  day  a  list  of  the 
cheques  that  they  have  drawn — another  piece  of 
useless  labour  arising  from  an  absurd  and  indeed 
unjust  legal  provision.  The  French  law  favours 
banks  just  as  it  favours  landlords.  It  is  not  sur- 
prising that  people  without  banking  accounts  do 
not  care  for  cheques,  for  it  is  a  long  business  to  cash 
one  at  a  French  bank,  and  one  is  lucky  if  it  takes 
less  than  a  quarter  of  an  hour ;  half  an  hour  is  quite 
normal  in  one  of  the  large  Parisian  banks.  After 
one  has  handed  in  the  cheque  at  one  counter,  it 
makes  the  tour  of  the  premises,  passing  from  one 
employee  to  another,  each  of  whom  makes  an  entry 


SMALL   PROPERTY  207 

in  a  book ;  finally  one  receives  the  money  at  another 
counter  or  at  a  sort  of  cage  in  which  the  cashier  is 
confined.  The  last  thing  that  French  banks  seem 
to  desire  is  legitimate  banking  business.  They  give 
no  facilities  to  their  customers  and  will  not  accept 
registered  stock  as  security  for  an  overdraft  or  a 
loan,  only  bonds  payable  to  bearer.  On  the  other 
hand,  they  sometimes  embark  on  enterprises  of  a 
kind  in  which  no  English  bank  would  be  permitted 
to  engage.  The  net  result  of  the  French  banking 
system  is  that  enterprising  and  progressive  French 
business  men  are  deserting  the  French  banks  for  the 
foreign  banks  established  in  France,  and  the  French 
bankers  are  being  cut  out  by  their  English,  Ameri- 
can, and,  before  the  war,  German  competitors. 
During  the  last  ten  years  foreign  banks  have 
greatly  developed  in  Paris.  At  the  beginning  of  the 
war  one  at  least  of  the  great  French  joint  stock 
banks  would  have  stopped  payment  but  for  the 
banking  moratorium,  which  indeed  was  decreed 
chiefly  for  the  purpose  of  saving  it.  The  French 
bankers  can  suggest  only  one  remedy  for  this  state 
of  affairs — Protection,  that  panacea  of  too  many 
Frenchmen ;  they  want  foreign  banks  to  be  penal- 
ised or  excluded  from  France.  It  does  not  occur  to 
them  that  it  is  they  who  are  to  blame  for  the  success 
of  the  foreign  banks  and  that  the  true  remedy  is  to 
reform  their  own  methods. 

In  the  national  finance  one  finds  the  same  sort  of 
methods  as  in  business  and  banking.  Local  taxes 
are  collected  by  the  mediaeval  system  of  the  octroi, 
a  tax  on  the  food  brought  into  a  town,  which,  of 
course,  falls  most  heavily  on  the  poor.  The  system 
of  direct  taxation  was  until  recently  equally 
out-of-date,  and  there  is  a  host  of  petty  and 
vexatious  indirect  taxes,  stamp  duties,  etc., 
which  are  so  many  pin-pricks  in  the  skin  of 


208         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

the  citizen,  and  some  of  which  are  hardly 
worth  the  cost  of  collection.  One  is  always 
having  to  buy  stamped  paper  merely  to  make  some 
application  to  an  official  or  for  some  other  purpose, 
or  having  to  pay  a  few  pence  for  the  privilege  of 
signing  one's  name  to  something  or  other.  In  fact, 
the  whole  system  of  finance  is  as  pettifogging  as  it  is 
antiquated.  During  the  half-century  of  the  Third 
Republic  France  has  had  only  two  statesmen  with 
financial  ability — M.  Rouvier  and  M.  Caillaux; 
M.  Rouvier  is  dead  and  M.  Caillaux  is  in  prison,  the 
victim  of  the  undying  hatred  of  the  bourgeoisie  for 
the  author  of  the  income  tax.  M.  Caillaux  would 
no  doubt  have  been  wiser  had  he  listened  to  those 
who  used  in  regard  to  the  income  tax  the  universal 
objection  to  all  change  :  "  Ce  n'est  pas  dans  nos 
mceurs."  The  establishment  of  the  income  tax 
might  at  last  have  given  France  a  straightforward 
and  simple  system  of  finance,  but  all  the  old  taxes 
except  the  patente  have  been  left  in  existence,  and 
M.  Caillaux's  income  tax  scheme  has  been  so  emas- 
culated and  is  so  inadequately  applied  that  most 
of  the  benefit  of  the  reform  has  been  lost.  At 
present,  thanks  to  the  incompetence  of  M.  Ribot 
and  M.  Klotz,  French  national  finance  is  in  so 
hopeless  a  state  of  chaos  that  even  a  genius  would 
shrink  from  tackling  it.  The  only  man  in  France 
that  could  do  so  with  the  slightest  hope  of  success 
is  M.  Caillaux. 

Although  the  State  is  petty  in  its  dealings  with 
the  taxpayer  and  parsimonious  in  small  things,  it 
is  also  very  extravagant ;  French  national  finance, 
like  French  business,  is  too  often  conducted  on  a 
system  which  is  at  once  penny  wise  and  pound 
foolish.  Money  is  wasted  on  hosts  of  useless 
officials,  whose  number  is  constantly  being  in- 
creased in  order  that  places  may  be  found  for 


SMALL   PROPERTY  209 

friends  and  political  supporters;  there  is  no  ade- 
quate supervision  of  Government  contracts,  in 
connection  with  which  there  are  often  very  shady 
proceedings,  with  the  result  that  the  State  fre- 
quently pays  twice  as  much  as  it  need;  there  is 
lavish  expenditure  on  "  special  missions "  to 
foreign  countries  and  on  perquisites  of  all  sorts; 
State  grants  and  subsidies  are  distributed  reck- 
lessly and  without  adequate  reason :  it  is  all  "aux 
frais  de  la  Princesse,"  and  the  "  Princess  "—that 
is  to  say,  the  State — can  afford  to  pay.  So  the 
national  expenditure  goes  up  annually  by  leaps 
and  bounds,  but  there  is  never  any  money  avail- 
able for  really  useful  objects.  I  cannot  better  sum 
up  the  situation  than  in  the  words  of  M.  Guerard  : 
"Meanness  may  be  as  bad  a  source  of  extrava- 
gance as  reckless  daring;  the  business  as  well  as 
the  national  affairs  of  France,  since  the  triumph 
of  the  middle  class,  have  too  often  been  conducted 
in  a  petit  bourgeois  spirit  which  is  at  the  same 
time  stingy  and  wasteful."1 

French  conservatism  extends  to  most  of  the 
practical  matters  of  life.  No  people  is  more  open 
to  new  ideas  or  more  suspicious  of  new  methods. 
The  inadequacy  of  the  laws  relating  to  hygiene 
and  sanitation  has  already  been  mentioned;  they 
would  not  remain  as  they  are  if  there  were  any 
general  demand  for  their  amendment,  but  in  fact 
there  is  not.  The  bulk  of  the  bourgeoisie  seem 
quite  content  that  landlords  should  regard  a  bath- 
room as  the  luxury  of  the  few  and  add  about  £20 
a  year  on  to  the  rent  of  any  flat  that  contains  one. 
The  sanitary  arrangements  even  in  expensive  flats 
are  simply  incredible.  The  first  house  in  which  I 
lived  in  Paris — it  was  in  the  Faubourg  St.  Ger- 
main— was  not  connected  with  the  main  drainage 

1  Op.  cit.,  p.  177. 


210         MY   SECOND  COUNTRY 

system,  as  I  discovered  only  after  I  had  signed  the 
agreement,  and  there  was  no  constant  water 
supply  in  the  water-closet;  the  cistern  had  to  be 
filled  by  hand.  The  stench,  when  the  cesspool 
under  the  courtyard  was  cleared  out  periodically, 
was  indescribable.  In  the  flat  to  which  I  next 
moved — a  more  expensive  one  in  the  neighbour- 
hood of  the  Madeleine,  in  the  very  centre  of  Paris 
— the  house  was  indeed  attached  to  the  main 
drainage  system,  but  there  was  hardly  any  flow 
of  water  in  the  closet  and  the  apparatus  seemed 
to  be  about  a  century  old.  The  landlord  graciously 
allowed  me  to  put  in  a  new  apparatus  at  my  own 
expense  on  condition  that  I  bound  myself  in  the 
lease  to  remove  it  at  the  end  of  the  tenancy  and 
replace  it  by  the  old  one  if  he  so  desired.  I  cannot 
think  that  this  condition  was  anything  but  an 
empty  demonstration  of  the  landlord's  rights;  in 
any  case,  when  I  left  the  flat,  he  did  not 
require  me  to  remove  the  improvement  that 
I  had  made.  When  the  old  apparatus  was 
removed  the  stench  was  so  poisonous  that  the 
workmen,  who  after  all  were  used  to  such  things 
and  were  not  squeamish,  were  nearly  made  ill.  I 
never  in  my  life  saw  an  apparatus  in  so  horribly 
filthy  a  condition;  its  removal  would  have  been 
ordered  by  a  sanitary  inspector  in  England  years 
before.  It  is  amazing  that  a  people  so  enlightened 
as  the  French  should  accept  such  conditions  and 
that  any  Government  in  the  twentieth  century 
should  tolerate  them.  But  the  propertied  classes 
in  France  are  the  masters  of  the  country,  and, 
until  they  are  dispossessed,  no  change  is  likely. 
If  these  are  the  conditions  in  expensive  bourgeois 
flats,  it  may  be  imagined  in  what  conditions  the 
proletariat  lives.  The  results  on  the  health  of  the 
nation  are  deplorable.  Even  in  some  country 


SMALL  PROPERTY  211 

districts  the  sanitary  conditions  are  such  that  tuber- 
culosis is  rampant.    Some  country  districts  are,  of 
course,  more  enlightened  than  others ;  as  a  rule  the 
enlightened  districts  are  those  where  the  school- 
master is  the  predominant  influence  and  the  others 
those  in  which  the  predominant  influence  is  that 
of  the  cure.     I  know  a  district  in  the  Franche- 
Comte   which  comes  within  the  latter  category; 
nearly  everybody  in  the  place  goes  to  Mass  and 
the  school  is  very  badly  attended.    The  peasants, 
most  of  whom  are  quite  well  off,  live  in  the  most 
filthy  conditions,  with  animals  in  their  houses  and 
so-called     dust-heaps     immediately     under     their 
windows.    In  that  lovely  valley,  where  the  purest 
air  is  available  for  everybody,  there  were  at  the 
time  of  my  last  visit  a  few  years  ago  several  cases 
of  consumption  in  a  population  of  between  two 
and  three  hundred.     Both  the  mayor's  sons  were 
tuberculous,  and  the  only  remedy  to  which  their 
father  had  resorted,  with  the  full  approval  of  the 
cure,  was  that  of  sending  them  on  a  pilgrimage  to 
a  neighbouring  miraculous  shrine,  which  does  not 
seem  to  have  been  in  working  order,  for  both  the 
sons  have  since  died.    The  village  schoolmaster,  a 
man    of   some    intelligence,    deplored    to    me    the 
insanitary  habils  of  the  population   and   did  his 
best  to  get  them  altered.     The  only  result  of  his 
efforts   was   that  the  cure  denounced  him   as   an 
atheist  and  advised  his  flock  from  the  pulpit  not  to 
send  their  children  to  school,  an  advice  which  they 
readily  followed,   as  they  much  preferred  to  use 
their  labour  in  the  fields.     Improved  hygiene  in 
France   would  mean  an   enormous   diminution  in 
such  diseases  as  tuberculosis  and  typhoid  and  a 
great  reduction  of  the  death-rate,  which  is  much 
higher  than  it  ought  to  be.     But  few  people  in 
France  seem  to  realise  that  fact  or  to  regard  any 

p  2 


212         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

change  in  the  "  moeurs  "  as  possible  in  this  or  in 
any  other  respect.  There  can  hardly  be  anywhere 
in  the  world  a  conservatism  so  conservative  as 
French  conservatism;  only  when  one  knows  the 
country  does  one  realise  how  obstinate  it  is  and 
how  immense  is  its  force  of  resistance  to  all  change. 
In  many  respects  France  is  still  a  mediaeval 
country.  Even  that  strange  combination  of  an 
excessive  desire  for  gain  with  an  excessive  suscep- 
tibility in  regard  to  the  "  point  of  honour  "  which 
one  often  finds  in  France  is  typically  mediaeval ; 
my  friend  Mr.  Oswald  Barron,  who  knows  the 
Middle  Ages  as  well  as  he  knows  his  own  time, 
assures  me  that  it  was  characteristic  of  the  age  of 
chivalry. 

One  reason  why  business  methods  are  so  back- 
ward in  France  is  that  too  many  of  the  most 
promising  young  men  do  not  go  into  commerce 
and  industry,  but  swarm  into  the  professions  and 
the  Government  service.  One  reason  of  this  is  the 
desire  of  parents  outside  or  on  the  verge  of  the 
bourgeoisie  to  make  their  son  a  bourgeois;  the 
other  is  their  fear  of  taking  any  risks,  which  leads 
them  to  prefer  to  a  business  career  for  their  sons 
the  security  of  the  Government  service  with  a 
pension  at  the  end  of  it.  Peasants  and  small 
tradesmen  will  deny  themselves  and  make  immense 
sacrifices  to  make  their  son  a  minor  Government 
official,  although  Government  officials  are  miser- 
ably underpaid  and  the  son  would  have  a 
better  chance  of  doing  well  for  himself  in 
any  other  calling,  even  that  of  an  artisan. 
But  the  minor  Government  official  is  a  bour- 
geois, his  pay,  though  small,  is  certain,  he  will 
never  lose  his  job  except  in  case  of  gross  mis- 
conduct, and  there  is  always  the  prestige  that 
attaches  in  France  to  an  official  of  any  kind. 


SMALL   PROPERTY  213 

Moreover,  the  young  man  in  an  official  position, 
however  humble,  may  hope  to  marry  a  girl  with 
a  small  dot.  Thus  in  too  many  cases  is  capacity 
which  might  have  been  usefully  employed  wasted 
in  a  life  of  dull  and  underpaid  monotony.  There 
is  no  class  in  France  more  to  be  pitied  than  these 
bourgeois  who  have  to  keep  up  appearances  on 
less  than  the  wages  of  a  navvy.  Sometimes  a 
talent  for  writing  enables  the  victim  to  escape  into 
journalism  or  literature.  The  Government  service 
has  given  us  a  Georges  Courteline,  and  he  out  of 
his  experience  of  it  has  given  us  "Messieurs  les 
Ronds-de-Cuir,"  which  makes  us  grateful  that  he 
has  been  through  the  mill. 

The  professions  are  also  overcrowded  with  young 
men,  many  of  whom  would  be  better  employed  in 
agriculture,  commerce  or  industry,  for  the  pro- 
fessions are  an  avenue  to  a  political  career :  law- 
yers and  doctors  swarm  in  politics.  And  a  political 
career  is  the  avenue  to  various  kinds  of  success 
for  an  able  and  ambitious  man.  If  he  chooses  the 
Left  he  may  hope  some  day  to  be  a  Minister  or 
even  President  of  the  Republic;  if  he  chooses  the 
Right  he  may  aspire  to  the  society  of  the  Faubourg 
St.  Germain,  to  the  Institute,  and  even  to  the 
Academic  Francaise;  in  any  case  he  will  have  the 
chance  of  making  money  without  working  for  it. 
The  consequences  are,  to  quote  M.  Guerard  once 
more,  that  "  agriculture,  commerce,  industry  and 
labour  are  deprived  of  their  natural  leadership. 
The  work  of  material  production,  thus  despised,  is 
too  often  left  to  narrow-minded  and  sordid  petty 
capitalists,  thrifty  and  hard-working  enough,  but 
deficient  in  foresight  and  enterprise." 

It  may  be  asked  why  the  young  men  themselves 
agree  to  this.  The  answer  is  that  too  many  of 
1  Op.  cit.t  p.  177. 


214         MY  SECOND   COUNTRY 

them  lack  the  initiative  to  assert  themselves  and 
allow  their  career  to  be  decided  for  them;  they 
submit  to  the  oppressive  influence  of  the  French 
Family,  which  is  often  destructive  of  initiative  and 
personal  independence.  So  are  the  French  system 
of  property  and  the  law  of  bequest,  which  secures 
to  children  an  absolute  reversion  to  the  pro- 
perty of  their  parents.  Too  many  young  men 
in  France  know  that  they  have  not  to  depend 
entirely  on  their  own  exertions,  that  there  is  pro- 
perty behind  them  which  they  must  some  day 
inherit  if  they  survive  their  parents.  They 
are  more  secure  than  the  son  of  an  American 
millionaire,  who  is  often  turned  out  on  the  world 
to  make  his  own  living  and  given  to  understand 
that  his  share  in  his  father's  property  depends  on 
his  own  conduct.  How  often  in  England  has  one 
seen  young  men  ruined  by  the  possession  of  a  small 
income,  which  paralysed  their  energies  by  relieving 
them  of  the  absolute  necessity  of  working  and  led 
them  to  drift  into  a  fife  of  idleness  !  In  France  the 
number  of  young  men  with  some  small  property  or 
the  prospect  of  it  is  very  much  larger,  and,  although 
young  Frenchmen  nearly  always  have  -some 
occupation,  the  possession  or  prospect  of  private 
means,  however  small,  leads  them  to  prefer  a  safe 
and  easy  occupation  in  which,  although  the  gains 
may  be  small,  there  is  no  risk  and  no  necessity 
for  individual  effort.  The  professions  do  not,  of 
course,  come  within  that  category,  but  the  Govern- 
ment service  does.  An  active  and  energetic  Govern- 
ment servant — and  there  are  a  few — reaps  no 
benefit  from  his  activity  and  energy;  he  has  the 
same  pay  as  the  others,  who  just  put  in  a  few 
hours  occasionally  at  their  office  and  do  in  a  per- 
functory way  the  very  small  amount  of  work  that 
is  necessary,  and  he  has  no  more  chance  of  pro- 


SMALL  PROPERTY  215 

motion.  One  of  the  reasons,  perhaps  the  chief 
reason,  why  there  are  more  enterprise  and  initative 
in  England,  in  America,  and  in  "Germany  than  in 
France  is  that  in  those  countries  a  much  larger 
proportion  of  men  have  no  property  and  have 
nothing  but  their  own  energies  to  depend  upon. 
The  only  healthy  society  is  one  in  which  everybody 
earns  his  living  and  nobody  has  anything  but  what 
he  earns.  That  ideal  can  be  attained  only  by  the 
abolition  of  private  property  in  the  means  of  pro- 
duction, but,  until  it  is  attained,  a  country  like 
the  United  States,  where  few  own  property  but  the 
opportunities  of  earning  are  great,  is  in  a  more 
healthy  condition  economically  than  a  country 
where  many  own  property  but  the  opportunities 
of  earning  are  small.  It  is  much  better  for  a 
country  that  money  should  constantly  change 
hands,  that  fortunes  should  be  easily  made  and  as 
easily  lost,  than  that  the  capital  should  be  held 
by  generations  of  "  narrow-minded  and  sordid 
petty  capitalists."  It  is  said  that  the  French 
system  produces  stability;  perhaps  it  does,  but  a 
dynamic  society  is  more  alive  than  a  static  one,  and 
social  stability  may  easily  become  stagnation.  Of 
course,  huge  individual  fortunes — the  concentra- 
tion of  a  large  proportion  of  the  capital  of  a 
country  in  a  few  hands  as  in  the  United  States — 
are  a  danger.  Such  conditions  might  end  in  a 
servile  State  controlled  by  a  few  plutocrats— that 
is  already  to  some  extent  the  case  in  the  United 
States.  "But  the  very  fact  that  the  property  owners 
are  few  will  make  it  much  more  easy  to  get  rid  of 
them  when  once  the  nation  is  determined  to  do  so. 
France  is  even  more  a  plutocracy  than  America, 
and  the  lot  of  the  propertyless  is  all  the  worse  from 
the  fact  that  their  masters  are  many.  The  great 
financiers  who  really  rule  France  can  always 


216         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

rely  on  the  support  of  the  army  of  property 
owners,  who  form  a  solid  barrier  against  all 
change  and  to  whom  the  conservatism  and  the 
backwardness  of  France  in  so  many  respects  are 
mainly  due. 

The  smallness  of  earnings  in  France  is  itself  the 
result  of  the  subdivision  of  property,  and  the  thrift 
of  the  French  people  has  in  the  end  benefited  only 
the  purely  capitalist  class — those  who  have 
attained  enough  property  to  live  entirely  on  rent 
and  interest.  One  reason  why  workmen  have 
higher  wages  in  England  and  America  than  in 
France  is  that  English  and  American  workmen 
have  never  been  thrifty.  Wages  in  France  are  not 
merely  nominally  lower  than  in  England  or 
America;  their  purchasing  power  is  less.  Indeed 
the  cost  of  living  of  the  proletariat  is  higher  in 
France  than  in  England,  so  that  the  superiority  of 
English  wages  is  even  greater  than  appears  from 
the  nominal  money  values.  And  even  if  the  cost  of 
living  all  round  be  higher  in  the  United  States  than 
in  France — a  point  as  to  which  I  am  very  doubtful 
—the  difference  is  nothing  like  so  great  as  that 
between  the  nominal  money  value  of  the  wages. 
In  countries  where  people  do  not  save  the  em- 
ployers are  obliged  in  the  end  to  pay  higher  wages, 
especially  if  the  proletariat  be  strongly  organised ; 
in  a  country  where  most  people  save  and,  there- 
fore, always  have  something  to  fall  back  upon, 
the  majority  will  always  accept  lower  wages  than 
they  would  if  they  had  nothing  to  fall  back  upon. 
The  French  proletariat  does  not  practise  thrift  as 
do  the  peasants  and  the  small  bourgeois,  but  it  is 
still  more  thrifty  than  the  English  or  American 
proletariat — and  its  employers  reap  the  benefit. 
The  wages  of  the  French  proletariat  have  tended 
to  rise  steadily  as  it  became  less  and  less  thrifty, 


SMALL  PROPERTY  217 

and  its  trade  organisations  have  become  stronger, 
although  they  are  still  weaker  than  in  England  or 
America,  partly  because  the  proletariat  in  France 
is  a  smaller  portion  of  the  population  than  in  the 
other  two  countries,  partly  because  men  that  have 
other  resources,  however  small,  in  addition  to  their 
earnings  are  less  willing  to  join  Trade  Unions  than 
men  that  have  none.   But  it  is  in  regard  to  salaries 
that  the  effect  of  the  subdivision  of  property  on 
earnings  is  most  marked.     All  the  salaried  classes 
in    France    are    miserably    underpaid,    from    the 
highest     to     the     lowest — Government     servants, 
judges,  professors  and  teachers  no  less  than  bank 
clerks     and     office     employees.       The     difference 
between  salaries  in  France  and  salaries  in  England 
or    America    is    far    greater    than    the    difference 
between  wages.    A  French  judge  of  the  High  Court 
does  not  get  more  than  about  £1,200  a  year  and 
the    Keeper    of    Pictures    in    the   Louvre    has    a 
salary    of  £600.      The    low    rate    of    salaries    is 
due     to     the     assumption     that     either    a     man 
has    private   means    or    else    his    wife    has   a  dot 
— and  that  is  very  often  the  case.    So  it  is  assumed 
in  fixing  the  salaries  of  women  that  every  woman 
has   a   man  to  keep  her,  and  there  were  before 
and    even    during    the    war    directors    of  theatres 
in    Paris     not     ashamed     to     pay    chorus     girls 
eighty  francs  (£3  4s.)  a  month.    During  the  strike 
of  the  midinettes  (the    employees    in    the    dress- 
making and  millinery  trades)  in  Paris  in  1917  one 
of  the  leading  employers  said  to  the  strikers  :  "  I 
don't  see  why  you  want  higher  wages;  you  can 
always  get  a  man  to  keep  you."     The  result  of 
this  system  is  that  the  men  that  have  no  private 
means  and  whose  wives  have  no  dots,  the  women 
that  either  cannot  or  will  not  find  a  man  to  keep 
them,  cannot  possibly  live  on  their  salaries,  and 


218         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

the  further  result  is  that  they  are  tempted  to  get 
money  by  other  means — not  always  very  scrupu- 
lous. One  of  the  reasons  of  the  prevalence  of 
corruption  in  the  public  service  and  of  defaulting 
cashiers  in  banks  and  business  houses  is  the  dis- 
graceful inadequacy  of  the  salaries  paid.  Govern- 
ments and  private  employers  that  pay  salaries  on 
which  a  man  cannot  live  deserve  to  be  cheated, 
and  they  frequently  are. 

It  is  easy  to  understand  how  the  subdivision  of 
property  tends  to  reduce  salaries,  for  we  have  a 
parallel  case  in  England  in  the  payment  of  women's 
labour.  Before  the  war  the  salaries  and  wages 
paid  to  women  were  low  chiefly  because  a  large 
proportion  of  the  employed  were  either  married 
women  or  girls  that  lived  at  home  who,  not  being 
entirely  dependent  on  their  earnings,  were  willing 
to  accept  low  salaries.  The  possession  by  a  large 
proportion  of  French  employees  of  a  small  amount 
of  property  has  exactly  the  same  effect.  In  both 
cases  the  consequences  are  disastrous  for  those  that 
have  nothing  but  their  earnings  to  depend  on. 
Ultimately  the  salaried  classes  of  the  bourgeoisie 
in  France  would  be  better  off  if  they  had  no  pro- 
perty; the  tendency  that  they  are  now  showing 
to  combine  with  the  proletariat  is  perhaps 
a  symptom  that  they  are  beginning  to  recognise 
that  fact.  It  is  a  sign  of  change  when  actors, 
artists  and  bank  clerks  form  Trade  Unions  and 
affiliate  themselves  to  the  General  Confederation 
of  Labour. 

The  practice  of  illicit  commissions  is  rampant 
in  France,  and  although  a  law  was  recently  passed 
to  suppress  it,  it  is  unlikely  to  have  much  effect. 
So  general  has  the  habit  of  giving  and  receiving 
commissions  become  that  it  has  spread  to  the 
classes  of  the  community  not  engaged  in  business ; 


SMALL  PROPERTY  219 

there  are  plenty  of  men  and  women  belonging  to 
the  authentic  noblesse  that  do  not  hesitate  to 
accept  commissions  from  dealers  for  selling  works 
of  art  to  their  friends  or  to  American  millionaires 
that  have  penetrated  into  the  Faubourg  St.  Ger- 
main. One  lady  belonging  to  an  historic  French 
family  boasted  of  the  success  with  which  she  had 
planted  spurious  pictures  on  Americans.  Another 
result  of  low  salaries  and  wages  is  the  tipping 
system,  which  is  universal;  one  can  give  tips  in 
France  to  people  to  whom  one  would  never  dare 
to  offer  one  in  England,  to  certain  classes  of 
Government  officials,  for  instance.  The  tipping 
system,  of  course,  does  not  permanently  increase 
earnings.  The  tips  in  most  cases  ultimately  reach 
the  pockets  of  the  employers,  who  in  some  trades 
have  ceased  to  pay  any  wages  at  all,  or  even,  as 
in  the  case  of  waiters,  make  their  employees  pay 
them.  The  waiters  are  now  agitating  for  the  aboli- 
tion of  tips,  but  it  will  be  very  difficult  to  induce 
the  French  to  abandon  the  traditional  pourboire 
which  has  become  deeply  rooted  in  their  "  mceurs." 
When  the  Duval  restaurants  were  first  started  tips 
were  prohibited  and  the  waitresses  were  paid 
wages,  but  it  was  soon  found  impossible  to  enforce 
the  prohibition.  Some  customers  insisted  on 
giving  tips  and  naturally  got  the  most  attention; 
finally,  the  prohibition  was  abandoned,  and  so  was 
the  payment  of  wages  to  the  waitresses,  who  now 
pay  two  francs  a  day,  in  return  for  which  they 
get  their  meals,  and  depend  for  their  earn- 
ings entirely  on  the  tips.  In  French  theatres 
the  employees  are  paid  no  wages  and  have  to  prey 
on  the  public.  Before  one  reaches  one's  seat  in  a 
Parisian  theatre  one  has  to  run  the  gauntlet  of 
three  ouvreuses,  the  lady  who  presides  over  the 
cloak-room,  the  lady  who  sells  programmes,  and 


220         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

the  lady  who  shows  one  to  one's  seat,  with  the 
result  that  the  price  of  the  seat  is  considerably 
augmented. 

The  effects  of  the  subdivision  of  property  on 
agriculture  are  quite  as  bad  as  on  commerce  and 
industry.  Peasant  proprietorship  has  now  been 
tried  in  France  for  more  than  a  century ;  it  was  no 
doubt  an  improvement  on  the  old  system  of  land 
tenure,  and  for  a  time  it  worked  well.  It  has  had, 
as  I  said  in  a  previous  chapter,  the  enormous 
advantage  of  setting  the  peasant  free  from  the 
domination  of  the  chateau  and  the  cure  and 
making  him  independent.  But  the  introduction  of 
agricultural  machinery  and  of  new  agricultural 
methods  has  made  peasant  proprietorship  ar 
anachronism  and  it  is  becoming  more  and  more 
evident  that  it  is  doomed.  The  agricultural 
methods  of  France  are  in  general  as  obsolete  as  its 
business  methods.  They  vary,  of  course,  in 
different  parts  of  the  country — some  are  more  pro- 
gressive and  enlightened  than  others — but  over  a 
great  part  of  France  one  can  still  see  ploughs  that 
look  as  if  they  came  out  of  a  miniature  in  a 
mediaeval  manuscript  being  drawn  by  a  yoke  of 
oxen.  It  is  very  picturesque  but  hardly  practical. 
The  English  farmer  is  sufficiently  conservative,  but 
the  French  farmer  is  more  so.  How  indeed  can  a 
small  peasant  farmer  with  little  education  ever  get 
to  know  about  new  discoveries  or  improved 
methods  ?  He  is  content  with  the  methods  of  his 
father  and  grandfather,  and  does  not  even  know 
that  there  are  any  others.  Moreover,  even  if  he 
were  disposed  to  use  machinery,  he  could  not 
afford  to  buy  it,  and  it  would  not  pay  to  buy  it 
for  a  farm  so  small  as  most  of  the  farms  in  France. 
In  some  parts  of  France,  especially  in  Normandy, 
where  the  farms  are  as  a  rule  larger  than  elsewhere, 


SMALL    PROPERTY  221 

a  certain  amount  of  machinery  is  used;  as  a  rule 
the  farmers  hire  it.  Since  the  war  the  Government 
has  made  a  half-hearted  attempt  to  supply 
machinery  to  the  farmers,  but  it  has  not  gone  very 
far.  Undoubtedly  considerable  progress  has  been 
made  in  some  regards,  for  example,  wine-growing 
has  been  greatly  extended  during  recent  years,  and 
the  vineyards  of  France  are  one  of  the  most  valu- 
able national  assets.  Perhaps  it  is  in  nursery 
gardening  that  most  progress  has  been  made,  par- 
ticularly in  the  neighbourhood  of  Paris  and  other 
large  towns.  The  great  increase  in  productivity 
obtained  by  intensive  culture  makes  it  profitable 
to  grow  fruit  and  vegetables  within  easy  distance 
of  large  towns,  where  land  is  expensive,  and  one 
gets  vegetables  in  Paris  as  fresh  as  if  they  had 
come  out  of  one's  own  garden.  Never  have  I  been 
able  in  London  to  get  such  lettuces  as  one  has  in 
Paris.  But  wine-growing  and  nursery  gardening 
do  not  require  machinery  and  can  be  carried  on 
satisfactorily  on  a  small  scale.  That  is  not  the 
case  with  other  branches  of  agriculture.  Every 
peasant  proprietor  wants  to  grow  some  of  every- 
thing on  his  small  farm,  with  the  result  that  it  is 
divided  up  into  small  patches  of  various  crops, 
often  without  much  regard  for  the  qualities  of  the 
land.  The  first  aim  of  the  peasant  proprietor  is 
to  grow  what  he  wants  for  himself,  and  although 
this  primitive  system  is  attractive  from  the  senti- 
mental point  of  view,  it  is  not  suited  to  modern 
economic  conditions.  Production  on  a  large  scale 
has  too  many  advantages  to  be  abandoned,  and 
those  advantages  are  as  great  in  agriculture  as  in 
other  industries.  I  am  told  by  agricultural  experts 
that  the  corn  production  of  France  is  considerably 
less  than  it  ought  to  be  for  the  amount  of  land 
employed. 


222         MY  SECOND  COUNTRY 

One  of  the  worst  results  of  peasant  proprietor- 
ship is  the  amount  of  useless  labour  that  it  involves. 
Nowhere  in  France,  so  far  as  I  know,  are  the  fields 
dug  with  spades  as  they  still  sometimes  are  in 
Italy,  but  in  many  parts  of  France  the  farmers 
have  not  got  much  beyond  that  stage.  The  system 
of  growing  crops  in  small  patches  and  the  lack  of 
machinery  make  the  life  of  the  agricultural  popula- 
tion one  of  monotonous  and  unending  toil.  The 
time  has  now  come  when  this  system  of  isolated 
production  on  a  small  scale  will  have  to  be  altered, 
for  the  simple  reason  that  it  is  no  longer  possible 
to  find  the  labour  for  it.  Unless  there  is  an 
immediate  and  radical  change  in  French  agricul- 
tural methods,  a  large  quantity  of  land  will  inevit- 
ably go  out  of  cultivation.  Even  before  the  war 
the  problem  of  agricultural  labour  was  already 
becoming  serious.  For  many  years  there  has  been 
a  steady  exodus  from  the  country  into  the  towns ; 
in  the  five  years  1906-1911  the  rural  population 
decreased  by  about  600,000  and  the  urban  popula- 
tion increased  by  about  950,000.*  No  census  has 

1  Between  1872  and  1911,  whereas  the  whole  population  of 
France  increased  by  3,498,588,  that  of  the  department  of  the 
Seine  (Paris  and  its  suburbs)  increased  by  1,933,982,  and  the 
aggregate  population  of  the  other  seventy. nine  towns  that  had 
in  1911  more  than  30,000  inhabitants  by  2,421,346,  so  that  in 
the  thirty-nine  years  the  population  of  the  rest  of  France,  which 
is  far  from  being  exclusively  rural,  decreased  by  856,740.  The 
decrease  in  the  rural  population  must  have  been  at  least  2£ 
millions.  The  number  of  towns  with  more  than  30,000  and  less 
than  50,000  inhabitants  rose  from  twenty  in  1872  to  forty-one 
in  1911,  that  of  towns  with  more  than  50,000  and  less  than 
100,000  from  fourteen  to  twenty-four,  and  the  number  of  towns 
with  100,000  inhabitants  or  more  from  nine  to  fifteen.  In 
1906-1911  the  increase  of  population  in  the  department  of  the 
Seine  alone  (305,424)  was  nearly  as  great  as  the  increase  in  the 
whole  of  France  (349,264).  The  aggregate  population  of  the 
Seine  and  of  the  seventy-nine  provincial  towns  with  more  than 
30,000  inhabitants  increased  in  1906-1911  by  656,149—306,885 
more  than  the  increase  in  the  whole  of  France.  Between  1901 


SMALL  PROPERTY  223 

been  taken  since  1911,  but  it  is  certain  that  the 
exodus  has  continued,  and  the  Director  of  Statistics, 
M.  March,  considers  that  it  is  likely  to  continue. 
One  reason  of  it  is  compulsory  military  service : 
the  young  rustics  during  their  two  or  three  years 
in  the  barracks  get  a  taste  for  town  life  and  many 
of  them  refuse  to  return  to  the  country.  But  a 
more  important  reason  is  a  growing  disinclination 
for  an  intolerable  life  of  dull  and  ceaseless  toil. 
That  disinclination  is  both  intelligible  and  reason- 
able, and  is  partly  the  result  of  improved  education 
and  wider  intellectual  interests.  Whatever  the 
poets  may  say,  the  occupation  of  making  holes  in 
the  ground  is  not  an  interesting  one  and  has  a 
deadening  effect  on  the  intelligence.  The  pictures 
that  Guy  de  Maupassant,  Flaubert,  Emile  Zola, 
Octave  Mirbeau,  and  other  French  writers  have 
given  us  of  French  rural  life  are  not  universally 
true,  but  they  are  true  nevertheless. 

The  majority  of  French  farms  are  worked  entirely 
by  the  owner,  his  wife  and  family.  Only  in  Nor- 
mandy and  other  districts  where  the  farms  are 
larger  are  paid  labourers  employed  to  any  extent, 
and  their  total  number  is  comparatively  small. 

and  1906  the  population  decreased  in  fifty-five  rural  depart- 
ments  and  increased  in  thirty-two  predominantly  urban  depart- 
ments ;  between  1906  and  1911  it  decreased  in  sixty -four  and 
increased  in  only  twenty-three,  all  departments  almost  entirely 
urban  and  industrial.  The  depopulation  of  the  rural  districts 
is  also  shown  by  the  fact  that  the  number  of  communes  with 
less  than  400  inhabitants  increased  between  1906  and  1911  by 
668,  whereas  the  number  of  communes  with  more  than  400 
but  not  more  than  2,000  inhabitants  decreased  by  667  ;  this 
means  that  667  communes  passed  from  the  latter  into  the 
former  category.  In  1911  there  were  33,520  communes— more 
that  eleven -twelfths  of  the  communes  of  France — with  a 
population  not  exceeding  2,000,  of  which  16,028  had  not  more 
than  400  inhabitants ;  174  communes  had  not  more  than  fifty 
inhabitants;  1,191  more  than  fifty,  but  not  more  than  100; 
4,970  more  than  100,  but  not  more  than  200  ;  6,361  more  than 
200  but  not  more  than  300 ;  4,332  from  300  to  400. 


224          MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

The  members  of  a  peasant  farmer's  family 
work  much  harder  than  any  English  agricultural 
labourer,  not  one  of  whom  would  consent  to  be 
treated  by  an  employer  as  the  sons  and  daughters 
of  a  peasant  farmer  are  treated  by  their  parents. 
In  the  majority  of  cases  the  sons  and  daughters 
until  they  marry  work  for  their  clothes,  board,  and 
lodging  only  and  have  little  or  no  money  at  their 
own  disposal.  When  the  son  marries,  he  brings 
his  wife  to  live  in  his  father's  house  and  is  admitted 
to  partnership,  unless  the  position  of  the  family 
permits  him  to  have  a  farm  of  his  own ;  sometimes 
a  family  has  two  small  farms,  in  which  case  the 
son  may  take  one  of  them.  As  for  the  daughters, 
until  they  marry  they  are  nothing  but  drudges,  and 
the  drudgery  continues  after  their  marriage,  for 
they  have  to  take  their  share  of  the  work  on  their 
husbands'  farms.  In  a  country  house  in  which  I 
was  staying  some  years  ago  I  asked  a  housemaid, 
who  was  the  daughter  of  a  peasant  farmer,  why  she 
had  left  her  home  for  domestic  service.  She  told 
me  that  it  was  because  she  found  the  work  intoler- 
ably hard,  and  she  explained  that  in  the  summer 
she  rose  at  sunrise,  worked  in  the  fields  all  day 
until  sunset,  and,  when  she  returned  home,  had 
various  domestic  duties  which  sometimes  occupied 
her  until  long  past  midnight.  It  is  not  surprising 
that  the  younger  generation  is  getting  tired  of  a 
life  like  this  and  that  young  men  and  women  are 
leaving  the  country  for  the  towns  in  ever-increasing 
numbers.  Before  the  war,  then,  French  agriculture 
was  already  menaced  by  a  serious  deficiency  of 
labour,  and  the  war  has  made  matters  worse.  I 
have  already  said  that  M.  March  in  his  report  on 
the  population  in  February,  1919,  estimated  that 
the  male  population  in  France  between  the  ages  of 
sixteen  and  sixty-five  will  not  exceed  10,300,000  in 


SMALL   PROPERTY  225 

1935— a  diminution  of  two  millions  on  the  figures 
of  the  last  census.1  M.  March  also  pointed  out  that 
the  rural  districts  would  inevitably  suffer  the  most, 
and  indeed  wquld  probably  bear  almost  the  whole 
burden  of  the  diminution,  for  the  gaps  in  the  towns 
are  likely  to  be  filled  by  immigrants  from  the 
country,  which  will  thus  be  more  depopulated  than 
ever.  The  diminution  in  the  number  of  men 
between  the  ages  of  eighteen  and  fifty  is,  of  course, 
proportionately  greater.2  The  losses  of  the  rural 
population  in  the  war — killed  and  permanently  dis- 
abled— must  have  been  at  least  a  million,  and  if 
the  exodus  from  the  country  into  the  towns  was  as 
great  between  1911  and  1914  as  it  was  in  the  pre- 
ceding five  years — it  is  believed  to  have  been 
greater — French  agriculture  is  faced  with  an 
immediate  loss  of  about  1,500,000  men  on  its  popu- 
lation of  1911,  and  a  still  greater  one  in  the  near 
future.  This  means  ruin  if  the  present  system 
continues  without  modification. 

The  only  possible  immediate  remedy  seems  to  me 
a  vast  scheme  of  State-aided  co-operation.  The 
farmers  in  a  given  district  should  agree  to 
work  all  their  farms  together  and  the  State  should 
provide  an  abundant  supply  of  machinery  to  be 
hired  out  to  them.  The  general  use  of  modern 
agricultural  machinery  would  very  much  reduce  the 
amount  of  labour  required.  But  I  confess  that  I 
see  little  hope  of  any  such  scheme,  for  I  know  of 
no  politicians  capable  of  organising  or  even  initiat- 
ing it;  most  of  them  do  not  even  seem  to  realise 

1  See  page  50. 

2  Military  service  begins  at  the  age  of  twenty,  and  men  remain 
liable  to  be  called  under  the  colours  until  the  age  of  forty-eight  ; 
but  during  the  war  recruits  were  called  up  at  eighteen,  and 
men  who  were  under  forty-eight  at  the  beginning  of  the  war 
were  retained  under  the  colours  until  the  end,  although  some  of 
them  were  by  then  in  their  fifty-second  year. 

Q 


226         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

that  there  is  any  problem  to  solve.  What  is  really 
wanted  is  an  autonomous  national  organisation  for 
dealing  with  the  matter,  directed  by  men  of  prac- 
tical knowledge  and  free  from  the  paralysing  grasp 
of  the  bureaucracy.  But  there  is  little  chance  of 
getting  it.  The  rulers  of  France,  with  their  greatest 
national  industry,  their  most  valuable  national 
asset,  in  imminent  danger  of  shipwreck,  have  been 
giving  all  their  attention  to  securing  the  Saar  coal- 
fields and  prohibiting  imports  for  the  benefit  of  a 
few  industrial  magnates.  It  is,  no  doubt,  because 
the  peasants  themselves  had  begun  to  realise  the 
difficulties  which  face  the  present  agricultural 
system  and  because  they  had  begun  to  feel  the  pinch 
that  they  were  turning  towards  Socialism  during 
the  last  few  years  before  the  war.  There  is  reason 
to  believe  that  that  tendency  is  increasing;  it  is  at 
least  probable  that  revolutionary  feeling  exists  to 
some  extent  among  the  peasants  that  have  served 
in  the  war,  as  it  certainly  does  among  the  urban 
soldiers,  but  there  is  no  means  at  present  of  forming 
a  definite  opinion  on  the  subject.  During  the  war 
those  that  were  left  behind  on  the  land  have  been 
harder  worked  than  ever,  but  their  profits  have  also 
been  large ;  on  the  other  hand  they  have  been  com- 
pelled to  allow  a  considerable  quantity  of  land  to 
go  out  of  cultivation,  and  in  the  war  zone  the 
peasants  have,  of  course,  suffered  as  much  as  every- 
body else.  Efforts  were  made  early  in  the  war  to 
induce  women  and  girls  from  the  towns  to  work  on 
the  land,  but  they  failed  completely.  The  women 
of  the  peasantry  were  heroic  and  worked  harder 
than  ever,  but  French  agricultural  production  could 
not  have  been  maintained  at  all  without  the  help  of 
German  prisoners.  As  it  was,  the  production  of 
corn  was  reduced  by  one  Half.  Parliament 
during  the  war  Has  continued  the  traditional 


SMALL   PROPERTY  227 

policy  of  unjustly  favouring  the  peasants  at 
the  expense  of  the  urban  population  in  order 
to  obtain  their  support  against  the  proletariat. 
Not  only  have  incomes  derived  from  agricul- 
ture been  entirely  exempted  from  income  tax 
and  from  the  tax  on  excess  war  profits,  but 
agriculturists  have  even  been  exempted  from  the 
provisions  of  the  law  against  profiteering — a  formal 
rather  than  a  material  advantage,  it  is  true,  for 
the  law  is  more  or  less  inoperative  and  is  never 
likely  to  be  seriously  enforced.  It  remains  to  be 
seen  whether  these  sops  will  induce  the  peasants 
once  more  to  support  the  bourgeoisie  against  the 
proletariat. 

One  of  the  most  serious  consequences  to  France 
of  peasant  proprietorship  is  the  policy  of  Protec- 
tion, which  continues  chiefly  by  reason  of  agricul- 
tural support.  French  agriculture  need  not  fear 
Free  Trade  if  its  methods  were  modern,  but  it  is 
probable  that  the  peasant  proprietor  with  his  in- 
adequate resources  and  antiquated  methods  would 
not  be  able  to  face  foreign  competition  in  normal 
conditions.  He  could,  of  course,  face  it  in  present 
conditions,  for  the  rest  of  the  world  has  too  much 
need  of  all  its  food  to  export  much  into  France. 
One  of  the  greatest  scandals  of  the  war  was  the 
maintenance  of  import  duties  on  food,  although 
France  could  no  longer  for  the  moment  produce 
all  the  food  that  she  required  and  prices  would  in 
any  case  have  been  extremely  high  without  being 
artificially  increased.  At  any  time  import  duties 
on  food  are  indefensible  and  they  are  of  course  the 
reason  why  the  cost  of  food  is  always  higher  in 
France  than  in  England.  The  proletariat,  which 
has  been  consistently  sacrificed  to  the  bourgeoisie 
and  to  tHe  peasants  by  every  regime  that  has 
existed  in  France  since  the  Revolution  and  by  the 

Q  2 


228         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

Third  Republic  more  than  any,  will  not  much 
longer  consent  to  be  taxed  for  the  benefit  of  the 
agricultural  industry.  But  Free  Trade  would 
involve  a  radical  change  in  the  system  and  methods 
of  agriculture.  That  is  another  reason  for  making 
the  change,  for  which  there  are  so  many  reasons. 
The  very  existence  of  French  agriculture  depends 
on  it. 

The  effect  of  small  property  on  character  is  of 
course  particularly  marked  in  the  case  of  the 
peasants,  with  whom  the  avarice  that  has  spread 
to  the  bourgeoisie  originated.  That  avarice  is  the 
besetting  sin  of  the  peasant  is  universally  admitted, 
and  readers  of  Guy  de  Maupassant  know  that  it  is 
sometimes  carried  to  extreme  lengths.  But  I 
would  say  again  by  way  of  caution  that  it  is  not 
universal,  and  that  it  is  more  prevalent  among 
some  of  the  races  that  make  up  the  French  people 
than  among  others.  Guy  de  Maupassant's  stories 
are  all  about  Normandy,  and  the  closeness  of  the 
Norman  peasant  is  proverbial  throughout  France ; 
he  is  not  typical  of  the  French  peasants  as  a  whole. 
An  English  friend  who  was  running  a  hospital  in 
Ariege  during  the  whole  of  the  war  tells  me  that 
she  found  the  peasants  extremely  generous — very 
different  in  that  respect  from  the  bourgeoisie.  This 
is  not,  of  course,  an  isolated  case ;  generosity  will 
be  found  among  peasants  everywhere.  But  it 
remains  true  that  their  characters  have  been 
damaged  in  too  many  cases  by  property.  They 
are  inclined  to  excessive  mistrust  and  suspicion, 
but,  strangely  enough,  although  they  are  afraid 
to  trust  their  money  to  the  Government  savings 
bank  or  to  invest  it  in  sound  industrial  enterprises, 
they  are  always  ready  to  entrust  it  to  any 
swindling  company  promoter  who  promises  them 
ten  per  cent. ;  that  is  the  secret  of  the  invari- 


SMALL  PROPERTY  229 

able  success  of  wild-cat  company  promoting  in 
France.  It  is  the  inevitable  nemesis  of  excessive 
suspicion. 

But,  whatever  their  faults  may  be,  there  is  some- 
thing very  attractive  about  the  French  peasants. 
I  have  come  into  close  contact  with  them  during 
several  stays  of  considerable  length  in  country 
districts,  and  the  more  I  know  them  the  better  I 
like  them.  They  have  many  great  qualities,  con- 
spicuous among  which  is  their  sound  good  sense  in 
most  matters.  Their  sense  of  realities  is  refreshing. 
A  serious  illness  compelled  me  to  spend  three 
months  in  Touraine  in  1916,  and  I  saw  a  great  deal 
of  the  peasants.  Naturally,  like  everybody  else, 
they  talked  about  the  war,  and  I  used  to  let  them 
talk  without  expressing  my  opinions.  It  was  amus- 
ing to  notice  how  they  always  began  with  the  usual 
patriotic  cliches,  and  only  when  they  got  to  know 
one  better  said  what  they  really  thought,  which 
was  that  no  result  of  the  war  could  ever  make  it 
worth  while.  Perhaps  their  point  of  view  was  rather 
materialist,  even  terre-a-terre9  but  I  found  that 
point  of  view  refreshing  after  the  surfeit  of 
idealism  to  which  we  were  being  treated  by  way 
of  justifying  wholesale  slaughter.  The  peasants, 
not  being  ideologists,  were  less  indifferent  to  the 
massacre  of  young  men  than  most  of  the  bour- 
geoisie— especially  the  women*  and  old  men — 
seemed  to  be ;  they  knew  that  the  death  of  a  young 
man  is  a  monstrosity  the  horror  of  which  is  not 
diminished  by  any  religious  or  patriotic  sophism. 
Not  once  have  I  heard  a  peasant  say  that  a  man 
killed  in  the  war  was  better  off  or  that  he  was 
happy  to  die^for  his  country.  They  often  said 
that  the  war  ought  to  be  stopped,  but  they  never 
thought  of  revolting  against  it;  they  accepted  it 
with  the  patient  endurance  with  which  they  accept 


230         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

their  daily  toil  and  the  buffets  of  Nature.  But  a 
very  large  proportion  of  them  refused  to  subscribe 
to  the  war  loans  because  their  sons  at  the  Front 
wrote  to  them  that  they  would  be  prolonging  the 
war  if  they  did  so,  and  they  themselves  recognised 
the  justice  of  the  argument.  I  was  told  by  a  sub- 
prefect  that  not  a  penny  had  been  subscribed  to  a 
particular  war  loan  by  the  peasants  in  his  adminis- 
trative area.  The  French  peasants  have  always 
been  on  the  side  of  peace.  The  Chauvinism  of 
France  in  the  nineteenth  century  was  really  the 
Chauvinism  of  Paris,  which  was  always  able  to 
control  the  country  by  means  of  the  centralised 
administration.  The  peasants  voted  for  Louis- 
Napoleon  Bonaparte  in  1848  because  they  believed 
that  he  was  in  favour  of  peace  and  were  afraid  of 
the  bellicose  tendencies  of  the  Parisian  democracy ; 
when  their  hopes  were  deceived  by  the  policy  of 
Napoleon  III,  they  turned  against  the  Empire,  and 
in  1871  they  again  voted  for  peace  against  the 
Parisian  democracy.  They  care  very  little  about 
politics,  and  are  always  disposed  to  support  the 
existing  regime  provided  that  it  gives  them  peace 
and  leaves  them  alone  to  attend  to  their  own 
affairs.  Since  the  Third  Republic  had  done  that  up 
to  1914  they  were  Republicans  to  a  man;  even  in 
Brittany,  where  the  majority  of  the  peasants  vote 
Royalist,  they  do  so  chiefly  by  tradition,  and  would 
turn  round  at  once  if  they  thought  that  the  Royalist 
cause  had  the  smallest  chance  of  success.  The  great 
majority  of  the  peasants  are  not  religious,  even 
though  they  may  go  to  Mass  or  at  least  use  the 
church  for  baptisms,  first  communions,  marriages 
and  burials;  at  heart  they  are  Rationalists,  but 
they  have  often  a  considerable  element  of  super- 
stition, much  of  it  pre-Christian.  Even  the  external 
practice  of  religion  is  rapidly  declining  in  the  rural 


SMALL   PROPERTY  231 

districts  and  the  proportion  of  avowed  Free- 
thinkers is  steadily  increasing.  It  is  naturally  in 
the  most  prosperous  districts  that  the  intelligence 
of  the  peasants  is  highest ;  their  lives  are  less  hard, 
and  they  are  not  so  constantly  preoccupied  by  the 
problem  of  existence.  Life  is  easiest  and  happiest 
in  the  wine-growing  districts.  With  an  economic 
system  that  will  remove  the  necessity  of  thrift  and 
methods  that  will  reduce  the  present  excessive 
labour  and  give  more  leisure,  the  agricultural  popu- 
lation of  France  will  be  able  to  develop  to  the  full 
its  great  qualities  and  will  be  an  invaluable  factor 
in  the  life  of  the  nation.  One  almost  hesitates  to 
hope  for  it  more  education,  for,  after  the  experience 
of  the  war,  one  begins  to  doubt  whether  higher 
education  is  really  an  advantage,  at  any  rate  as  it 
is  at  present  understood.  For  the  intellectuals,  in- 
stead of  showing  an  example  of  reasonableness  to 
the  others,  have  been,  as  a  rule,  the  worst  of  all.  No 
peasant  has  talked  such  nonsense  as  has  been 
talked  and  written  by  distinguished  philosophers, 
eminent  men  of  science,  learned  professors,  and 
members  of  the  French  Academy. 

As  I  have  said,  the  chief  hope  of  France  at 
present  seems  to  me  to  lie  in  the  proletariat,  the 
one  class  that  has  escaped  from  the  demoralising 
influence  of  property.  I  learned  to  know  the 
Parisian  proletariat  as  I  never  had  known  it  before 
during  those  terrible  weeks  of  1914  before  the  battle 
of  the  Marne.  When  Paris  was  threatened  I  sent 
my  family  away  and  went  to  live  temporarily  in  a 
popular  quarter.  The  bourgeois  quarter  in  which 
I  lived  was  entirely  deserted  except  by  the  con- 
cierges and  had  become  intolerable  and  also  very 
inconvenient,  all  the  ordinary  means  of  communica- 
tion having  been  suspended.  In  those  days  the 
sense  of  common  danger  drew  together  those  who 


232          MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

had  remained  in  Paris,  and  we  became  almost  like 
one  large  family.  Perfect  strangers  spoke  to  one 
another  in  the  street ;  formality  and  convention  dis- 
appeared. I  was  thus  brought  into  close  contact 
with  the  proletariat  and  I  shall  never,  so  long  as 
I  live,  forget  their  admirable  attitude  in  those  days 
of  tension.  It  was  one  of  stoic  calm.  Some  of  the 
few  bourgeois  that  had  not  gone  to  Bordeaux  or 
elsewhere  were  talking  wildly  of  burning  Paris 
rather  than  allow  it  to  fall  into  the  hands  of  the 
Germans,  of  defending  the  streets  inch  by  inch, 
and  so  on.  I  never  once  heard  rodomontade  of  that 
sort  from  the  mouth  of  a  man  or  woman  of  the 
proletariat.  They  were  intensely  pessimistic  and 
convinced  that  Paris  would  almost  certainly  be 
occupied  by  the  Germans.  They  felt  that  they  had 
been  deserted  by  the  Government,  which  in  fact 
went  away  much  earlier  than  was  necessary,  but 
they  simply  accepted  the  situation  and  made  the 
best  of  it.  And  all  their  best  qualities  came  out. 
In  the  few  days  before  the  flight  to  Bordeaux  there 
was  an  atmosphere  of  nervosity  and  suspicion. 
After  the  lying  communiques  which  had  concealed 
the  French  defeats  and  made  the  public  believe  that 
the  French  Army  was  still  resisting  successfully 
near  the  frontier,  the  sudden  announcement  that 
the  Germans  were  close  to  Amiens  caused  a 
momentary  panic.  The  wildest  rumours  circulated 
through  Paris — stories  of  Generals  being  shot  for 
treason  and  every  kind  of  improbable  fiction-  All 
this  went  away  with  the  Government  and  the  bour- 
geoisie, and  the  people  of  Paris  became  perfectly 
calm. 

The  French  proletariat  has  always  been  greatly 
influenced  by  ideas.  During  the  first  half  of  the 
nineteenth  century  it  was  the  later  revolutionary 
idea  of  wars  for  democracy,  of  a  crusade  to  set  up 


SMALL   PROPERTY  233 

democracy  all  over  Europe  by  force  of  arms.  That 
idea  is  now  dead;  if  any  remnant  of  it  lingered, 
experience  of  the  latest  war  for  democracy  has 
killed  it.  Its  place  has  been  taken  by  the  idea  of 
Internationalism.  Throughout  the  war,  in  spite  of 
the  defection  of  many  leaders,  that  idea  has  been 
maintained  and  peace  finds  it  strong^-  than  ever. 
All  the  organisations  of  the  proletariat  protested 
unanimously  and  at  once  against  peace  terms  which 
belied  the  professions  of  the  Allied  Governments 
during  the  war.  Never  since  the  Revolution  has 
the  revolutionary  spirit  died  out  in  the  French 
proletariat,  in  which  there  is  more  disinterested 
devotion  to  a  cause  than  in  any  other  class.  When- 
ever the  Third  Republic  has  been  threatened,  it  is 
the  proletariat  that  has  saved  it,  not  because  it 
satisfied  its  aspirations,  but  because  it  was,  at  any 
rate,  a  step  towards  democracy.  The  level  of  intel- 
ligence in  the  proletariat  is  high;  there  is  a  great 
respect  for  intellect  and  a  growing  desire  for  know- 
ledge. There  is  nothing  of  which  the  French 
Socialist  workman  is  more  proud  than  the  fact  that 
Anatole  France  is  a  "  comrade  " — in  other  words, 
a  member  of  the  Socialist  Party.  Nevertheless, 
there  is  in  the  proletariat  a  bitter  hatred  of  the 
bourgeoisie  which  is  shared  by  all  that  is  best  in 
the  bourgeoisie  itself.  This  is  natural,  for  the 
French  proletariat,  a  minority  in  a  country  of  pro- 
perty owners,  has  been  the  Cinderella  of  France. 
There  are  men  of  remarkable  ability  in  the  Socialist 
Party  and  the  Trade  Unions.  Jaures,  who  was  the 
son  of  a  peasant,  was  the  greatest  statesman  of 
the  Third  Republic,  if  not  of  contemporary  Europe. 
It  would  be  invidious  to  mention  the  living  by 
name ;  I  am  proud  to  count  among  my  friends  some 
of  the  leaders  of  French  Socialism  and  Trade 
Unionism,  and  I  have  had  the  opportunity  of 


234          MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

appreciating  their  qualities.  There  are  among 
them  many  cool  heads  and  dispassionate  judg- 
ments. Without  a  knowledge  of  the  proletariat 
one  cannot  know  the  true  France. 

In  the  bourgeoisie  there  is  still  a  strong  phalanx 
of  intellectuals  that  have  not  succumbed  to  the 
madness  of  the  war.  Side  by  side  with  Anatole 
France  stand  younger  writers,  such  as  Henri 
Barbusse,  ready  to  join  with  the  proletariat  in  the 
struggle  for  freedom.  They  have  many  supporters 
in  the  professional,  literary,  and  artistic  classes  and 
even  here  and  there  in  other  sections  of  the  bour- 
geoisie. Those  of  the  lower  bourgeoisie  that  live 
wholly  or  mainly  on  their  earnings  are  beginning 
to  discover  that  their  interests  are  more  closely 
allied  to  those  of  the  proletariat  than  to  those  of 
the  capitalist  class.  Hence  the  remarkable  move- 
ment among  them  towards  Trade  Unionism.  The 
minor  Government  employees  and  the  elementary 
teachers  are  among  the  most  revolutionary  classes 
in  France  and  have  successfully  asserted  their 
right  to  organise. 

Such  are  the  respective  situations  of  the  various 
classes  in  France  at  this  moment,  when  the  greatest 
struggle  that  the  country  has  ever  known  since  the 
Revolution  seems  to  be  impending — a  struggle  to 
overthrow  the  power  of  the  bourgeoisie,  which  has 
been  the  ruling  class  for  more  than  a  century. 


CHAPTER  VII 

SOCIALISM,   SYNDICALISM,  AND  STATE  CAPITALISM 

"  State  Capitalism  (Etatisme)  is  the  organisation  of  the 
labour  of  the  community  by  the  State,  the  Government. 
Socialism  is  the  organisation  of  the  labour  of  the  community 
by  the  workers  grouped  in  statutory  associations  (associations 
de  droit  public)." — EMILB  V  ANDES,  VELDE. 

EVEN  more  than  other  countries  France  is  in 
need  of  Socialism,  for  the  power  of  money  and  the 
love  of  money  are  effects  of  which  the  cause  is  the 
private  ownership  of  the  means  of  production ;  the 
effects  can  be  got  rid  of  only  by  suppressing  the 
cause.  France  has  also  need  of  Socialism  to  enable 
her  to  fulfil  her  mission  in  the  world.  The  qualities 
of  the  French  people  do  not  fit  them  to  become  a 
great  industrial  nation ;  they  have  the  money- 
saving  but  not  the  money-making  capacity. 
Even  if  their  business  methods  were  modernised, 
as  they  should  be  in  any  case,  they  would  never 
hold  their  own  in  the  industrial  struggle  with 
countries  like  England,  Germany,  and  the  United 
States.  Further,  if  international  arrangements 
remain  unaltered,  France  will  inevitably  sink  to 
the  rank  of  a  second-class  Power,  by  reason  of  her 
terrible  losses  in  the  war,  from  which  she  has 
suffered  more  than  any  other  country.  She  is  now 
adding  to  a  colonial  empire  already  inflated  beyond 
her  strength  and  to  a  great  extent  unprofitable  on 

235 


236          MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

account  of  her  colonial  policy.  This  policy  of  reck- 
less expansion  is  likely  to  prove  ruinous  to  a  country 
bled  white  by  the  war  and  faced  with  appalling 
financial  problems.  If  the  burden  of  armaments 
is  to  continue — and  it  must  continue  unless  there  be 
a  radical  change  of  policy — it  is  hard  to  see  how 
France  can  ever  recover  herself.  The  salvation  of 
France  would  be  in  a  system  of  international 
Socialism  which  would,  on  the  one  hand,  free  every 
country  from  the  risk  of  aggression,  and,  on  the 
other,  by  suppressing  economic  frontiers,  enable 
every  country  to  lead  the  life  and  practise  the  forms 
of  production  best  suited  to  its  natural  conditions 
and  to  the  characteristics  of  its  inhabitants.  France 
would  then  have  no  need  to  keep  up  an  army  and 
navy,  to  aim  at  becoming  a  great  industrial  country, 
or  to  seek  for  more  and  more  territorial  possessions 
in  order  to  provide  markets  for  protected  industries. 
She  could  devote  herself  to  the  development  of  her 
natural  resources,  which  will  provide  her  with 
ample  wealth,  to  the  production  of  works  of  art  and 
objects  of  luxury,  which  has  always  been  her  prin- 
cipal industry,  and  to  the  pursuit  of  her  intellectual 
mission,  which  is  in  danger  of  being  stifled  in 
present  conditions.  France  has  often  been  called 
the  modern  Athens;  she  should  remember  that 
Athens  fell  through  a  desire  for  conquest  and 
expansion. 

But  there  is  more  than  one  kind  of  Socialism, 
or  rather  there  is  more  than  one  way  of  organising 
a  Socialist  society.  It  might  be  a  system  of  State 
monopolies  administered  by  a  highly  centralised 
bureaucracy  with  industrial  conscription  and  every 
citizen  in  the  receipt  of  the  same  salary  from  the 
State.  Such  a  system  is  not  likely  to  be  adopted 
in  France.  The  French  people  has  had  too  bitter 
an  experience  of  bureaucracy  and  State  monopolies 


SOCIALISM,  SYNDICALISM       237 

to  wish  to  extend  them ;  indeed,  it  is  the  identifica- 
tion of  Socialism  with  bureaucracy  and  State 
monopolies  that  has  led  so  many  advanced  thinkers 
and  revolutionaries  in  France  to  reject  it.  This  is 
the  "reformist  "  conception  of  Socialism,  of  which 
M.  Millerand  was  once  the  apostle,  which  seeks  to 
solve  the  social  problem  by  gradually  bringing  pro- 
duction under  the  control  of  the  State.  We  know 
that  theory  in  England  :  one  begins  with  municipal 
gas  and  water  supplies,  goes  on  to  the  nationalisa- 
tion of  mines  and  railways,  and  then  the  State 
takes  over  one  industry  after  the  other  until  at 
last  we  wake  up  one  fine  morning  to  find  that  we 
are  living  in  a  Socialist  community  without  having 
suspected  it.  This  theory,  which  is  really  etatiste 
rather  than  Socialist,  is  very  much  discounted  in 
France  at  present,  and  French  Socialism  is  becom- 
ing more  and  more  anti-etatiste,  that  is  to  say, 
is  returning  to  the  conceptions  of  Marx  and  Engels, 
who  declared  it  to  be  the  object  of  Socialism  to 
abolish  the  State  and  to  substitute  for  it  the  "  free 
federation  of  all  men."  They  were  not  thereby 
advocating  anarchism,  but  merely  the  suppression 
of  authority  in  favour  of  organisation.  At  its 
national  congress  in  April  1919,  the  French 
Socialist  Party  definitely  pronounced  itself  in 
favour  of  revolutionary  Socialism  to  be  attained  by 
the  dictatorship  of  the  proletariat,  as  against  the 
reformist  theory.  The  great  majority  of  the  party 
decided  to  support  reforms  so  long  as  the  capitalist 
system  continues,  but  that  is  quite  a  different 
matter  from  the  reformist  conception ;  the  reforms 
are  advocated  as  palliatives  of  existing  conditions, 
not  as  steps  towards  Socialism,  and  they  by  no 
means  necessarily  consist  in  an  increase  of  State 
monopolies.  Many  French  Socialists  are  opposed 
to  all  State  monopolies  in  present  conditions. 


238         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

M.  Emile  Vandervelde,  without  sharing  their 
opinion,  inclines  to  the  system  of  autonomous 
administration  with  representatives  of  the  workmen 
for  such  State  monopolies  as  may  be  desirable.1 
One  of  the  strongest  objections  to  State  monopolies 
is,  of  course,  the  claim  that  the  employees  of  the 
State  cannot  be  allowed  to  strike.  In  a  country 
with  conscription,  the  Government  has  the  power 
to  break  any  strike  in  a  public  service  by  mobilising 
the  employees,  as  M.  Briand  broke  the  French 
railway  strike  in  1910.  In  that  case  the  only  alter- 
native to  submission  is  mutiny,  that  is  to  say> 
revolution.  It  is  not  at  all  certain  that  even  a 
Socialist  State  would  allow  its  employees  to  strike, 
and  a  system  of  State  Socialism,  which  is  more 
accurately  called  State  Capitalism,  would  make  the 
workers  the  slaves  of  a  bureaucracy.  To  such  a 
system  French  Trade  Unionism  is  unanimously 
opposed,  and  nearly  all  French  Socialists  agree 
with  M.  Jules  Guesde  that  "the  nationalisation  of 
private  industries  by  the  bourgeois  State  is  not 
Socialism,  has  nothing  to  do  with  Socialism,"  and 
does  not  simplify  the  task  of  Socialism,  but  rather 
the  contrary.  For  Socialism  involves  the  entire 
abolition  of  the  wage  system  and  the  management 
of  industry  by  the  workers.  "Etatisme,"  says 
M.  Vandervelde,  "is  the  organisation  of  the  labour 
of  the  community  by  the  State,  the  Government. 
Socialism  is  the  organisation  of  the  labour  of  the 
community  by  the  workers  grouped  in  statutory 
associations  (associations  de  droit  public)."' 
And,  as  M .  Vandervelde  adds,  the  former  of  these 
systems  does  not  necessarily  involve  any  change  in 
the  relations  of  the  classes. 

The  objection  to  Etatisme  in  France  is  not,  how- 

1  "  Le  Socialisme  centre  I'Etat,"   Chapters  II.-IV. 
*  Op.  cit.,  p.  164. 


SOCIALISM,  SYNDICALISM       239 

ever,  based  merely  on  theoretical  considerations; 
it  is,  as  I  have  said,  the  result  of  bitter  experience. 
For  the  French  public  services,  whether  partially 
or  wholly  under  the  control  of  the  State,  are 
lamentably  inefficient,  and  as  for  the  State  mono- 
polies, they  are  a  curse  to  the  country.  The  rail- 
ways are  not  a  State  monopoly;  the  permanent 
ways  belong  to  the  State,  but  only  one  system 
is  directly  worked  by  it,  the  ethers  being  conceded 
to  private  companies  for  a  term  of  years,  at  the  end 
of  which  they  revert  to  the  State,  which  has 
then  the  choice  of  either  renewing  the  conces- 
sions or  taking  over  the  systems  at  a  valua- 
tion.1 So  far  as  the  railways  are  concerned, 
the  State,  therefore,  is  in  competition  with  private 
companies,  but  there  is  very  little  railway  competi- 
tion in  France,  the  lines  having  been  laid  down  in 
such  a  way  as  to  avoid  overlapping  as  much  as 
possible ;  there  are  few  places  between  which  there 
is  more  than  one  route.  The  system  directly 
worked  by  the  State  was  considerably  enlarged  in 
1910  by  the  purchase  of  the  Western  Railway  of 
France  before  the  period  of  its  concession  had 
expired.  This  purchase  was,  as  has  been  said, 
opposed  by  Jules  Guesde  and  a  certain  number  of 
strict  Marxists,  but  it  was  supported  by  Jaures 
and  the  majority  of  the  Socialist  Parliamentary 

1  The  concessions  last  from  forty  to  fifty  years.  Most  of  them 
were  renewed  in  1883  and  the  conventions  made  with  the  railway 
companies  by  M.  Reynial  on  November  20,  1883,  now  regulate 
their  relations  with  the  State.  The  State  repays  to  the  companies 
by  annuities  the  cost  of  construction,  less  £1,000  a  kilometre, 
and  the  cost  of  rolling  stock.  It  also  guarantees  the  share- 
holders a  minimum  dividend  of  four  per  cent.  This  "  garantie 
d'interets "  dates  from  the  Second  Empire  when  the  great 
railway  companies  were  formed  ;  if  a  railway  be  worked  at  a 
loss,  as  has  often  happened,  it  involves  a  heavy  expense  to  the 
State.  The  land  occupied  by  the  railways  belongs  to  the 
companies. 


240         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

Party.  It  was  an  extremely  bad  bargain  for  the 
State,  which  paid  the  shareholders  of  the  railway 
company  several  times  the  market  value  of  their 
property.  The  Western  Railway,  which  was  the 
oldest  in  France,  had  for  years  been  a  bye  word. 
The  slowness  of  its  trains  and  their  unpunctuality 
were  notorious,  and,  not  long  before  its  purchase 
by  the  State,  the  passengers  of  a  morning  suburban 
train  into  Paris  were  so  exasperated  at  having  been 
kept  waiting  half  an  hour  or  more  outside  St. 
Lazare  station — an  almost  daily  occurrence — that 
they  wrecked  the  station  as  a  protest  when  they 
at  last  arrived  there.  As  the  purchase  of  the 
Western  Railway  had  been  proposed  and  discussed 
for  some  years  before  it  was  actually  accomplished, 
and  as  in  any  case  the  concession  had  not  many 
years  to  run,  the  directors  had  spent  as  little  money 
as  they  possibly  could  and  even  necessary  repairs 
had  been  neglected.  The  permanent  way  was  in 
so  disgraceful  a"  condition  that  it  was  hardly  safe 
to  travel  on  it  at  a  rate  so  fast  as  forty  miles  an 
hour  and  it  has  since  had  to  be  entirely  relaid; 
the  stations  were  beginning  to  fall  to  ruin,  and  the 
rolling  stock  was  only  fit  to  be  scrapped.  Such  was 
the  condition  of  the  engines  that  they  were  con- 
stantly breaking  down,  especially  as,  for  reasons 
of  economy,  the  trains  were  usually  too  long  and 
heavy  for  a  single  engine.  The  boat-train  between 
Paris  and  Dieppe  rarely  got  through  without  a 
breakdown,  which  meant  the  delay  of  an  hour  or 
so.  It  was  for  this  worthless  property  that  the 
State  paid  an  enormous  sum,  which  made  the  pur- 
chase a  godsend  to  the  shareholders.  The  purchase 
of  the  Western  Railway  by  the  State  was  almost 
a  necessity,  since  it  was  becoming  a  public  danger, 
but  the  price  paid  was  a  public  scandal.  The  capital 
expenditure  involved  by  the  necessity  of  relaying 


SOCIALISM,  SYNDICALISM       241 

the  permanent  way,  rebuilding  the  stations,  re- 
placing the  rolling  stock,  and  generally  making  the 
system  workable,  will  in  the  end,  with  the  purchase 
money,  amount  to  more  than  it  would  have  cost 
to  construct  and  equip  a  new  railway,  and  the 
Western  Railway  must  for  many  years  be  run  at 
a  heavy  loss  to  the  taxpayers.  It  is  too  soon  to 
form  an  opinion  about  the  State  administration  of 
the  Western  Railway,  for  the  five  years  of  war  have 
put  a  stop  to  the  work  of  transformation,  the  manu- 
facture of  new  rolling  stock,  etc.,  and,  like  all  other 
French  railways,  the  Western  Railway  has  a  great 
deal  of  leeway  to  make  up,  but  in  the  four  years 
between  the  purchase  and  the  outbreak  of  the  war 
there  was  a  great  improvement  on  the  previous 
management  and  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  it 
will  be  continued.  But  the  comparison  has  to  be 
made,  not  with  the  old  Western  Railway,  which 
was  the  worst  in  France,  but  with  the  other  great 
private  railway  companies.  It  cannot  be  said  that 
the  old  State  Railway  was  in  any  way  superior  to 
the  P.L.M.,  the  Eastern  Railway,  or  the  Northern 
Railway;  indeed  the  latter  had  better  train 
services.  The  one  advantage  of  the  old  State  Rail- 
way was  that  it  ran  third  class  carriages  on  all  the 
trains,  whereas  on  the  other  lines  express  trains 
are  almost  invariably  first  and  second  class,  or 
even  first  class  only.  After  the  purchase  of  the 
Western  Railway  the  practice  of  having  no  third 
class  on  express  trains  was,  however,  continued 
until  the  war,  since  when  there  have  been  no 
express  trains. 

The  State  exercises  much  more  control  over  the 
railways  belonging  to  private  companies  than  was 
the  case  in  England  before  the  war— naturally 
so,  since  it  subsidises  them.  The  State,  for 
instance,  fixes  the  railway  fares  and  the  time- 

R 


242          MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

tables  have  to  be  submitted  to  the  Govern- 
ment, which  has  the  power  to  revise  them  and  to 
insist  on  more  trains  being  run.  But  this  control  is 
not  exercised  to  any  great  extent  to  the  advantage 
of  the  public.  The  fares  are,  it  is  true,  lower  than 
in  England,  the  third  class  rate  before  the  war 
having  been  about  four-fifths  of  a  penny  a  mile, 
the  second  class  not  quite  half  as  much  again,  and 
the  first  class  fares  double  the  third  class.  At 
present  the  pre-war  fares  are  increased  25  percent. 
But  third  class  passengers  almost  always  have  to 
travel  by  slow  trains,  so  that  people  with  small 
incomes  are  often  obliged  to  travel  second  class. 
This  is  a  monstrous  state  of  affairs  in  a  republican 
country ;  if  French  railway  companies  have  not  the 
sense  to  recognise,  as  the  English  companies  have, 
that  it  would  pay  them  to  cater  for  third  class 
passengers,  the  Government  of  the  Republic  ought 
to  use  its  powers  to  make  them  do  so.  People  to 
whom,  for  business  or  other  reasons,  time  is  of 
importance  are  often  obliged  to  travel  first  class ; 
for  instance,  the  only  train  by  which  it  is  possible 
to  reach  Marseilles  from  Paris  within  the  day  is 
first  class  only.  Moreover,  a  long  journey  in  a 
third  class  carriage  in  France  is  a  painful  experi- 
ence ;  most  of  the  third  class  carriages  have  no 
cushions  at  all  and  many  of  them  are  little  better 
than  cattle-trucks.  Except  on  a  very  few  big 
express  trains,  the  second  class  and  often  even  the 
first  class  carriages  are  not  so  comfortable  as  the 
third  class  on  English  railways ;  a  third  class  dining 
car  is  unknown  in  France.  The  railway  carriages, 
as  well  as  being  uncomfortable,  are  often  in  bad 
condition  and  usually  dirty.  The  "  trains  de  luxe," 
which  run  in  normal  times  between  France  and 
other  countries,  are  not  at  all  luxurious,  and  give 
no  value  for  the  heavy  charge  that  is  made  in 


SOCIALISM,  SYNDICALISM       243 

addition  to  the  first  class  fare.  They  consist  as  a  rule 
merely  of  sleeping  cars  and  a  dining  car ;  a  sleeping 
car  in  the  daytime  is  less  comfortable  than  an 
ordinary  first  class  carriage.  The  charge  for  sleep- 
ing accommodation  on  most  of  the  French  railways 
is  very  high;  between  Paris  and  Marseilles,  for 
instance,  it  is  forty  francs  (32s.),  in  addition  to  the 
first  class  fare.  On  the  whole,  the  French  railways, 
although  better  than  the  Italian,  are  inferior  in 
every  way  to  those  of  England,  Germany,  Belgium, 
Switzerland,  and  several  other  countries,  and  the 
State  Railway  is  not  the  best  of  them.  Railways, 
being  of  the  nature  of  a  natural  monopoly,  seem 
particularly  adapted  to  State  ownership,  but,  if 
they  are  owned  by  the  State,  they  should,  like  the 
Swiss  railways,  be  under  autonomous  management, 
responsible  to  the  Government,  but  independent  of 
the  bureaucracy,  and  the  workers  should,  as  is  not 
the  case  in  Switzerland,  be  represented  on  the 
managing  bodies. 

The  tramway  and  omnibus  services  in  France 
are  not  as  a  rule  public  monopolies;  in  Paris  they 
are  in  the  hands  of  private  companies  which  have 
concessions  from  the  municipality.  But  they,  like 
the  railways,  are  more  under  the  control  of  the 
bureaucracy  than  the  English  services  of  the  same 
kind,  to  which  they  are  much  inferior.  In  Paris  the 
services,t  except  on  one  or  two  lines  of  tramway, 
are  not  nearly  as  frequent  as  they  ought  to  be, 
with  the  result  that  many  of  the  lines  do  not  pay ; 
when  they  do  not  pay,  the  service  is  often  reduced, 
with*  the  result  that  the  loss  becomes  greater  than 
ever.  When  the  concession  for  the  Paris  tramways 
last  expired,  an  offer  for  it  was  made  by  an 
American  syndicate,  which,  unfortunately  for 
Paris,  did  not  obtain  it.  The  representative  of  the 
syndicate  undertook,  if  he  obtained  the  concession, 

R  2 


244          MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

to  provide  a  much  more  frequent  service  and 
explained  to  the  representatives  of  the  Municipal 
Council  of  Paris  that  it  would  pay  to  do  so ;  if,  he 
said,  it  was  found  that  a  line  did  not  pay  with 
trams  running  every  five  minutes,  the  way  to  make 
it  pay  was  to  run  them  every  two  minutes.  He 
was,  of  course,  right ;  people  in  Paris  get  so  dis- 
gusted with  waiting  for  a  tram  or  an  omnibus, 
with  the  prospect  of  not  being  able  to  find  a  place 
in  it  when  it  at  last  arrives,  that  they  take  a  cab 
if  they  can  possibly  afford  it.  On  the  Passy-Bourse 
line  of  motor  'buses  before  the  war  it  was  almost 
impossible  to  get  a  seat  at  the  stopping'-place 
nearest  to  my  home,  and  I  have  often  waited  a 
quarter  of  an  hour  in  vain ;  the  reason  was  that  the 
'buses  ran  only  about  every  five  minutes  and  the 
service  was  quite  insufficient.  For  motives  of 
economy  even  in  normal  times  two  tramcars  are 
run  together  on  many  lines,  and,  as  the  motor  is 
only  sufficiently  powerful  to  draw  a  single  car,  the 
pace  is  much  reduced  and  breakdowns  are  frequent. 
The  deficiencies  of  all  these  public  services  are  the 
result  of  the  penny  wise  and  pound  foolish  policy 
— the  pettifogging  petit  bourgeois  spirit — which 
does  so  much  harm  in  private  business. 

That  policy  and  that  spirit  are  just  as  evident  in 
the  postal  service,  which  is  lamentably  inefficient. 
There  are  not  enough  post  offices  in  Paris  or  in  any 
large  town,  and,  while  useless  officials  are  multiplied 
elsewhere,  the  post  offices  are  insufficiently  staffed. 
Paris  has  a  complete  system  of  pneumatic  'tubes  for 
the  transmission  of  express  letters — hence  known 
as  "pneumatiques  " — from  one  post  office  to 
another.  The  "  pneumatiques  "  are  handed  over 
the  counter  at  a  post  office  or  else  put  in  special 
letter  boxes  supposed  to  be  cleared  every  quarter 
of  an  hour.  If  there  were  no  delay  in  their  despatch 


SOCIALISM,  SYNDICALISM       245 

or  delivery  they  would  reach  their  destination  in  a 
very  short  time,  and  in  fact  fifteen  years  ago  one 
could  count  on  the  delivery  of  a  "pneumatique  " 
in  three-quarters  of  an  hour.  As  time  went  on, 
however,  the  use  of  this  convenient  method  of 
correspondence  enormously  increased,  but  little  or 
no  increase  was  made  in  the  number  of  messengers, 
with  the  result  that  there  is  now  a  long  delay  before 
delivery,  and  in  the  last  year  before  the  war  a 
"pneumatique"  already  took  from  two  to  three 
hours  in  transmission,  that  is  to  say,  about  the 
time  taken  by  an  ordinary  letter  in  London.  Even 
then  it  was  quicker  than  a  telegram,  which  I  have 
known  to  take  five  or  six  hours  in  peace  time  to 
go  from  one  part  of  Paris  to  another.  Letters  also 
are  slow,  their  delivery  is  irregular,  and  they  are 
lost  more  often  than  they  ought  to  be.  As  for  the 
telephone  service,  it  is  even  worse  in  France  than 
in  England,  where,  by  the  way,  it  has  not  improved 
since  it  was  taken  over  by  the  State.  The  postal 
service  is  hardly  one  to  be  left  in  private  hands, 
but  my  experience  is  that  the  American  cable  com- 
panies are  more  efficient  and  give  better  facilities 
than  any  State  telegraph  service,  probably  because 
of  the  competition  between  them,  and  I  see  no 
reason  why  the  carrying  of  letters  should  be  a 
monopoly.1  The  defects  of  the  French  post  office 

1  The  war  has  shown  us  in  England  that  even  so  apparently 
harmless  a  State  monopoly  as  that  of  letter- carry  ing  may  be 
insidiously  exploited  against  individual  liberty,  for  we  have 
learned  that  letters  have  been  secretly  opened  by  a  Cabinet 
Noir  in  such  a  way  as  to  prevent  the  fact  from  being  detected. 
This  system,  once  begun,  is  likely  to  be  continued,  for  it  is 
undoubtedly  useful  to  the  police  and  may  help  in  the  detection 
of  crime,  but  it  is  better  that  crime  should  be  undetected  than 
that  the  private  correspondence  of  every  citizen  should  be  at 
the  mercy  of  policemen.  The  system  has  always  existed  in 
France,  and  that  is  one  of  the  reasons  why  the  French  State 
so  jealously  guards  its  monopoly  and  will  not  even  allow  a 


246          MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

administration  are  universally  recognised  in  France 
and  are  the  subject  of  bitter  complaints,  but 
nothing  can  move  the  inert  mass  of  officialdom  and 
matters  grow  worse  rather  than  better.  The  remedy 
is  no  doubt  autonomous  administration ;  there  must 
be  a  complete  separation  between  the  organ  of 
government  and  the  organs  of  administration.  It 
is  only  just  to  say  that  there  are  certain  postal 
facilities  in  France  that  might  well  be  adopted  in 
England  :  the  money  order  post  card  or  letter  card 
is  much  the  most  convenient  method  of  transmit- 
ting money  by  post ;  the  telephone  message  is  also 
very  convenient  and  is  now  the  most  rapid  method 
of  communication  in  Paris,  and  the  letter-telegram 
is  cheap  and  very  useful.1 

If  the  State  in  France  is  inefficient  and  incom- 
petent in  such  matters  as  the  railways  and  the 
postal  service,  it  is  even  more  so  when  it  tries  its 
hand  at  production.  The  State  monopolies  in 
tobacco  and  matches  could  hardly  be  equalled  as 
object  lessons  of  the  pernicious  results  of  a  bureau- 
cratic State  Capitalism,  and  have  done  more  than 
anything  else  to  inspire  the  French  people  with  a 
horror  of  the  State  management  of  industry.  Every 
visitor  to  France  knows  that  French  matches  are 

District  Messenger  Service  in  Paris.  The  monopoly  of  letter- 
carrying  is  in  itself  an  unnecessary  infringement  of  liberty  ;  if 
the  State  can  do  it  better  than  anybody  else,  as  it  probably  can, 
why  should  it  fear  competition  ? 

1  Money  sent  by  a  money  order  post  card  or  letter  card  is  paid 
to  the  addressee  by  the  postman  who  delivers  the  card.  A 
telephone  message  is  a  message  telephoned  to  the  post  office 
nearest  to  the  address  of  the  person  for  whom  it  is  intended, 
and  thence  sent  out  by  telegraph  messenger  ;  it  cost  fifty  centimes 
in  Paris  before  the  war,  and  now  costs  seventy-five.  A  letter- 
telegram  is  a  letter  dispatched  by  telegraph  after  9  p.m.  to  any 
telegraph  office  that  is  still  open,  and  delivered  by  the  first 
post  in  the  morning  ;  it  costs  only  one  franc  for  every  hundred 
words,  and  enables  a  letter  to  be  dispatched  at  midnight  from 
Paris  to  Marseilles,  for  instance,  and  delivered  by  the  first  post. 


SOCIALISM,  SYNDICALISM      247 

the  worst  and  the  dearest  in  the  world ;  one  might 
be  reconciled  to  paying  a  penny  (three  halfpence 
since  the  war)  for  sixty  common  wooden  matches 
such  as  were  sold  in  England  before  the  war  for 
twopence  or  threepence  a  dozen  boxes,  if  only  the 
matches  would  strike,  but  half  of  them  usually  fail 
to  do  so.  The  tobacco  monopoly  is  conducted  in 
defiance  of  the  elementary  dictates  of  good  sense, 
and  tobacco  in  every  form  is  much  dearer  than  it 
would  be  if  its  production  were  in  private  hands. 
These  monopolies  are,  of  course,  used  principally 
as  methods  of  obtaining  revenue;  the  supporters 
of  a  State-Socialist  system  say  that  that  would  not 
be  the  case  under  such  a  system,  and  that  there- 
fore it  cannot  be  judged  by  these  examples.  It  is 
true  that,  if  the  main  object  of  the  French  State 
were  not  to  fleece  the  consumer,  it  could  provide 
good  matches  and  good  tobacco  at  reasonable 
prices,  but  there  are  other  evils  in  State  monopoly 
which  would  not  be  got  rid  of  even  if  revenue  were 
not  the  first  aim.  The  tobacco  manufactured  by 
the  French  Government  is  all  grown  on  French 
territory,  and  is  therefore  all  of  one  kind.  For  my 
part  I  prefer  it  to  any  other,  and  habitually  smoke 
"Caporal  "  cigarettes  when  I  can  get  them,  but 
there  are  many  people  that  prefer  Oriental  or  Vir- 
ginian tobacco.  Yet  the  State  obstinately  refuses 
to  provide  for  the  taste  of  such  people  by  manu- 
facturing Turkish,  Egyptian,  or  Virginian  cigar- 
ettes ;  before  the  war  it  had  a  contract  with  the 
Ottoman  Regie,  which  has  the  tobacco  monopoly 
in  Turkey,  and  imported  its  cigarettes,  but  they 
were  very  dear.  Other  cigarettes  are  imported 
from  England,  Egypt  and  America,  but  as  the 
import  duty  is  enormous,  their  prices  are  prohibi- 
tive; common  Virginian  cigarettes  cost  something 
like  eight  shillings  a  hundred  even  before  the  war 


248          MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

and  are  now  much  dearer.  Havana  cigars  are  also 
imported  and  are  naturally  dear ;  some  of  the  cheap 
cigars  made  in  France  are  just  smokable.  As  for 
pipe  tobacco,  it  is  impossible  to  get  any  kind  except 
the  French.  No  private  person  is  allowed  to  import 
tobacco  in  any  form  except  by  special  permission 
from  the  Director  of  Customs ;  the  permission  in- 
volves elaborate  formalities  and  the  maximum 
amount  that  any  single  person  may  import  in  one 
year  is  a  kilogramme  (about  2  Ib.  3  oz.).  As  the 
importer  had,  even  before  the  war,  to  pay  duty  at 
the  rate  of  nearly  30s.  a  Ib.,  the  permission  is  rarely 
demanded.  The  whole  policy  of  the  State  is  to 
force  the  consumer  to  buy  French  tobacco,  whether 
he  likes  it  or  not.  This  is  not  all :  if  the  Govern- 
ment happens  to  have  large  stocks  of  some  par- 
ticular brand  of  tobacco  or  cigarettes  to  be  worked 
off,  it  refuses  to  supply  the  tobacconists,  who  are 
all  State  officials,  with  other  kinds,  so  that  smokers 
cannot  even  get  the  particular  kind  of  French 
tobacco  to  which  they  are  accustomed.  There  is 
yet  another  grave  abuse.  Legally  only  the  tobac- 
conists appointed  by  the  Government  can  sell 
tobacco  retail  in  any  form,  but  it  is  of  course 
impossible  to  prevent  restaurants  and  cafes  from 
supplying  their  customers  and  the  Government 
winks  at  their  doing  so.  As  they  are  obliged  to 
obtain  their  supplies  at  the  tobacconist's  and  pay 
the  ordinary  prices,  they  put  on  a  profit  and  are 
not  content  with  a  small  one  ;  some  of  them  charge 
two  or  three  times  the  legal  price  and  the  public 
is  fleeced  more  than  ever.  There  are  constant  pro- 
tests in  the  Press  against  this  illegality,  which  could 
easily  be  stopped  by  legalising  the  sale  in  restau- 
rants and  cafes,  allowing  them  a  discount  and 
forcing  them  to  sell  at  the  legal  prices  or  even  a 
little  more;  but  that  would  interfere  with  the 


SOCIALISM,  SYNDICALISM       249 

precious  monopoly  of  the  tobacconists,  so  nothing 
is  done.  In  France  it  is  always  the  consumer  who 
is  sacrificed. 

During  the  war  the  abuses  in  connection  with  the 
sale  of  tobacco  became  scandalous  and  illegal 
profiteering  became  general.  It  was  almost  impos- 
sible to  obtain  cigars,  cigarettes,  or  tobacco  at  a 
tobacco  shop,  but  they  were  to  be  had  at  restaur- 
ants or  cafes,  and  even  from  private  individuals,  at 
prices  several  times  as  high  as  those  at  which  they 
could  legally  be  sold.  The  Government  made  no 
attempt  to  stop  these  illegal  practices,  and  smokers 
who  could  not  afford  the  fancy  prices  demanded  by 
the  profiteers  had  to  go  without  tobacco  or  stand  in 
a  queue  once  a  week  outside  a  tobacco  shop  to 
get  half  an  ounce  of  tobacco  or  a  packet  of  ten 
cigarettes.  Yet  it  is  said  that  the  production  of  the 
State  factories  was  greater  during  the  war  than  in 
normal  times.  Such  are  the  blessings  of  State 
monopoly. 

Pawnbroking  in  France  is  a  municipal  monopoly, 
and  there  is  something  to  be  said  for  making  it  one. 
The  interest  charged  is  no  lower  than  in  England, 
and  the  proportion  of  the  value  of  an  article  lent  on 
it  is  usually  not  so  high,  but  at  least  the  business  is 
honestly  conducted  and  the  valuations  are  just. 
Moreover,  an  article  deposited  at  the  "  Mont  de 
Piete  "  can  never  be  sold  so  long  as  the  owner  con- 
tinues to  pay  the  annual  interest  on  the  sum  lent, 
but  the  owner  can  at  any  time  ask  for  it  to  be  sold 
by  auction,  in  which  case  he  receives  the  balance  of 
the  price  that  it  fetches,  after  repayment  of  prin- 
cipal and  interest.  Should  the  article  be  sold  in 
default  of  payment  of  interest,  the  owner  can  also 
claim  the  balance.  In  fact,  the  "  Mont  de  Piete  " 
is  not  run  for  profit,  and  this  is  an  enormous  advan- 
tage ;  indeed,  the  strongest  opponents  of  State  mono- 


250          MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

polies  can  admit  that  pawnbroking  is  cne  of  the  very 
few  businesses  which  ought  to  be  run  by  the  State. 
During  the  war  the  advantage  was  greater  than 
ever,  for  the  sale  of  articles  for  non-payment  of  in- 
terest was  entirely  suspended  and  the  suspension  has 
not  yet  been  removed.  Articles  pawned  five  years 
ago,  on  which  no  interest  has  been  paid,  can  still  be 
redeemed  on  payment  of  the  arrears  of  interest. 
But  even  here  the  doctrine  that  the  State  or  a  public 
body  must  never  take  any  risk  causes  an  absurd 
anomaly.  The  "  Mont  de  Piete  "  will  not  accept 
any  work  of  art  such  as  a  painting  or  a  piece  of 
sculpture,  and  on  other  objects  that  have  a  special 
artistic  or  collecting  value  will  allow  only  the  in- 
trinsic value.  For  instance,  a  piece  of  valuable  old 
silver  is  valued  at  the  current  rate  of  silver  and  an 
old  tapestry  or  a  Persian  carpet  is  valued  as  if  it  were 
modern.  The  result  is  a  system  of  illicit 
and  illegal  pawning  at  which  the  State  is  obliged  to 
wink,  for  the  owner  of  a  valuable  picture  or  tapestry 
cannot  reasonably  be  prevented  from  borrowing 
money  on  it.  This  facilitates  the  disposal  of  stolen 
works  of  art,  for  the  lender  of  money  on  a 
work  of  art  will  never  give  any  information,  because 
he  has  acted  illegally,  and  the  police  have  no  means 
of  giving  warning  of  the  theft  of  works  of  art  to 
persons  likely  to  lend  money  on  them,  or  of  tracing 
them  if  they  are  pawned.  The  consequence  is  that, 
nothing  being  easier  than  to  dispose  of  a  stolen 
work  of  art  without  detection,  persons  to  whom 
works  of  art  have  been  entrusted  by  their  owners 
for  sale  have  a  much  greater  temptation  to  pawn 
them  than  in  England  and  often  yield  to  it.  There 
are  various  devices  for  lending  money  on  articles 
without  technically  infringing  the  law,  such  as  a 
sale  under  a  contract  giving  the  seller  the  right  to 
buy  back  the  article  at  a  certain  price  within  a 


SOCIALISM,  SYNDICALISM      251 

given  time.  If  the  State  undertakes  pawnbroking— 
and  I  have  given  the  reasons  why  it  is  desirable  that 
it  should  do  so — it  should  not  make  restrictions  of 
this  kind.  It  may  safely  be  said  that  private  pawn- 
brokers in  England,  who  lend  money  on  pictures, 
do  not  take  much  risk ;  they  employ  expert  valuers 
and  leave  a  large  margin  for  depreciation.  The 
State  could  do  the  same.1  If  the  doctrine  that  the 
State  can  take  no  risk  were  applied  to  industry  in 
general,  the  consequences  of  State  monopoly  would 
indeed  be  appalling. 

It  may  be,  as  I  have  said,  that  a  Socialist  State 
owning  the  means  of  production  would  manage  its 
monopolies  better  than  the  State  monopolies  are 
managed  in  France,  but  they  would  never  be  really 
satisfactory.  Most  of  the  vices  that  are  so  patent 
in  the  working  of  French  monopolies  are  inherent  in 
monopoly  itself  and  would  never  be  eradicated  in 
any  economic  conditions.  The  owner  of  a  mono- 
poly has  the  consumers  at  his  mercy ;  he  can  force 
them  to  buy  what  he  likes,  not  what  they  like,  and 
impose  upon  them  goods  of  an  inferior  quality.  He 
will  abuse  his  power  as  inevitably  as  an  absolute 
ruler  abuses  it ;  monopoly  is  economic  despotism 
and  is  as  bad  as  any  form  of  despotism.  Enligh- 
tened and  benevolent  despotism  might  be  the  best 
form  of  government  if  it  were  possible  to  find  an 
enlightened  and  benevolent  despot,  but  it  is  not, 
for  the  necessary  qualification  for  such  a  position 
is  intellectual  and  moral  perfection.  Even  if  a 
man  could  be  found  combining  in  himself  the  genius 
of  Napoleon  and  Pericles  with  the  unselfishness  and 
disinterestedness  of  St.  Francis  of  Assisi,  he  would 

1  If  the  State  declines  to  take  any  risk,  it  should  legalise 
private  pawnbroking  in  the  objects  on  which  it  refuses  to  lend 
money,  or  even  general  private  pawnbroking  under  proper 
regulations  in  competition  with  itself. 


252          MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

be  demoralised  by  the  exercise  of  arbitrary  power. 
And  arbitrary  power  is  just  as  demoralising  in 
economic  as  in  political  matters.  A  Socialist 
State  would  be  just  as  much  inclined  as  a  capitalist 
State  to  impose  home  products  on  the  consumer — 
perhaps  even  more  so,  since  it  would  be  more 
directly  interested  in  discouraging  the  purchase  of 
imported  products.  A  State  with  the  monopoly  of 
production  might  even  try  to  make  the  consumer  buy 
what  it  believed  to  be  good  for  him  rather  than  what 
he  himself  wanted ;  indeed  that  tendency  has  already 
manifested  itself  in  the  prohibition  of  alcoholic 
drinks  in  the  United  States,  where  there  is  a  move- 
ment to  prohibit  the  manufacture  and  sale  of  to- 
bacco. Human  nature  being  what  it  is,  a  system  of 
State  Socialism  monopolising  the  whole  of  produc- 
tion would  inevitably  end  in  a  slavery  more  galling, 
even  if  less  pernicious,  than  the  economic  slavery 
produced  by  the  present  capitalist  system,  because 
its  manifestations  would  be  more  evident  to  every- 
body. Our  lives  would  be  regulated  by  an  omni- 
potent bureaucracy  which  would  decide  what  and 
how  much  we  were  to  eat  and  drink,  how  we  should 
dress  ourselves,  what  sort  of  houses  we  should  live 
in  and  how  they  should  be  furnished.  We  should 
all  be  called  at  the  same  time  in  the  morning  by  a 
sanitary  official  who  would  deposit  at  our  door  a 
sanitary  breakfast,  and  we  should  go  at  the 
same  hour  to  a  sanitary  factory  or  work- 
shop and  take  our  lunch  in  a  sanitary 
restaurant  where  the  menu  would  be  arranged 
on  strict  sanitary  principles.  The  belief  that 
abuses  of  bureaucracy  and  State  monopoly 
could  be  checked  by  democracy  is  illusory;  we 
know  by  experience  that  parliaments  have  no  effec- 
tive control  over  the  bureaucracy  even  now  when 
the  action  of  the  bureaucracy  is  restricted  to  a 


SOCIALISM,  SYNDICALISM       253 

comparatively  limited  field.  If  the  whole  of  pro- 
duction were  put  under  the  control  of  the  bureau- 
cracy, it  would  be  impossible  to  devise  any  means 
of  keeping  it  in  check.  No  elected  body,  still  less 
the  general  public,  could  keep  an  eye  on  the  in- 
numerable and  intricate  details  of  the  production 
and  distribution  of  a  whole  nation ;  even  if  the 
elected  bodies  sat  continuously  all  the  year  round 
for  twelve  hours  a  day,  they  would  not  have  the 
time  to  deal  with  the  matter.  Moreover,  the  mem- 
bers of  the  Administration  would  always  defend 
the  bureaucrats  and  make  out  a  good  case  for  them 
by  tendencious  information  which  it  would  be  very 
difficult  to  control.  Probably  the  people  would 
sooner  or  later  rebel  and  the  result  would  be  a 
disastrous  reaction  and  the  complete  discredit  of 
Socialism. 

Another  inherent  vice  of  State  monopoly  is  that 
it  removes  the  economic  incentive  to  individual  in- 
dustry and  efficiency.  The  bureaucrats  that 
manage  a  State  monopoly  know  that  it  will  make 
no  difference  to  them  whether  they  manage  it  ill 
or  well,  whether  the  returns  are  small  or  large, 
whether  the  quality  of  the  products  is  good  or  bad. 
The  managers  of  the  French  match  monopoly  have 
no  interest  in  providing  the  public  with  good 
matches ;  the  public  is  obliged  to  buy  the  bad  ones 
because  it  can  get  no  others.  A  private  manufac- 
turer with  no  monopoly  who  persisted  in  supplying 
such  matches  at  such  a  price  would  have  to  close 
down  his  factory  in  a  few  months.  The  managers 
of  the  French  tobacco  monopoly  have  no  interest  in 
improving  the  quality  of  the  goods  that  they  supply 
or  in  searching  for  new  methods  or  new  brands ;  the 
consumer  is  at  their  mercy  and  no  amount  of 
energy,  initiative,  or  resource  would  better  their 
own  position.  There  is  no  reason  for  supposing  that 


254         MY   SECOND  COUNTRY 

a  Socialist  bureaucracy  would  be  any  better  than 
any  other.  Minerals,  like  land,  are  a  natural  mono- 
poly, for  they  cannot  be  manufactured  and  their 
quantity  is  limited;  that  being  so,  it  is  desirable 
that  the  monopoly  should  be  public  and  not  private, 
but  it  should  be  under  autonomous  management,  in 
which  the  workers  should  have  a  voice.1  But  in  ordin- 
ary production  competition  is  necessary  and  Social- 
ism cannot  dispense  with  it ;  it  can  only  alter  its 
character.  Nor  can  Socialism  dispense  with  the  eco- 
nomic incentive ;  if  all  citizens  were  paid  the  same 
income,  no  matter  what  they  did  or  whether  they 
did  anything,  it  would  be  impossible  to  find  any- 
body to  do  the  disagreeable  or  routine  work  and 
industrial  conscription,  that  is  to  say,  forced 
labour,  would  become  inevitable.  Forced  labour 
is  slavery.  It  is  hardly  worth  while  to  revolu- 
tionise the  whole  social  system  in  order  that  the 
wage-slaves  of  the  capitalists  may  become  the  wage- 
slaves  of  a  bureaucracy.  A  Socialist  community 
will  get  the  disagreeable  work  done  by  paying  extra 
for  it.  There  is  no  objection  from  the  Socialist 
point  of  view  to  a  certain  inequality  of  income; 
what  is  objectionable  in  the  present  system  is  not 
so  much  the  fact  that  one  man  has  a  larger  income 
than  another  as  the  power  that  is  given  to 
certain  individuals  by  the  ownership  of  the 
means  of  production  to  force  the  community 
to  pay  tribute  to  them  and  to  their  descen- 
dants for  ever.  Once  that  power  is  abolished 
by  the  socialisation  of  the  means  of  produc- 
tion, one  man  may  earn  more  than  another 
without  any  injurious  results,  and  it  will  always  be 

1  An  excellent  system  has  been  proposed  by  Mr.  Robert 
Smillie  for  the  management  of  the  English  mines  under  national 
ownership  by  representatives  of  the  community,  the  experts 
and  the  workmen. 


SOCIALISM,  SYNDICALISM       255 

essential  to  efficiency  that  the  amount  of  a  man's 
earnings  should  to  some  extent  depend  on  the 
quality  of  his  work — all  the  more  essential  in  a 
society  which  will  guarantee  to  every  worker  the 
minimum  necessary  for  a  decent  livelihood.  The 
most  valuable  work  in  the  world  always  has  been 
and  always  will  be  done  for  its  own  sake,  not  for 
the  sake  of  gain,  and  even  under  a  system  of  State 
Socialism  with  equal  incomes  for  everybody  there 
would  be  no  lack  of  poets,  artists,  inventors  or  men 
of  science.  But  the  ordinary  work  of  production 
would  suffer,  for  it  is  just  that  work  which 
needs  the  economic  incentive,  especially  if  it 
be,  as  it  often  must  be,  monotonous  or  even 
disagreeable. 

It  is  because  all  this  is  beginning  to  be  recognised 
in  France  that  there  is  in  the  proletariat  and  among 
Socialists  so  strong  a  reaction  against  Etatisme. 
That  reaction  began  to  find  expression  at  the  end 
of  the  last  century  in  the  Syndicalist  theory  pro- 
pounded by  the  leaders  of  French  Trade  Unionism. 
This  theory  is  to  be  found  in  germ  in  the  pamphlet 
of  M.  Sorel,  "  L'Avenir  Socialiste  des  Syndicats," 
published  in  1898-  It  is  that  production  should 
be  entirely  in  the  hands  of  the  respective  Trade 
Unions  ("  Syndicats  ") — that  the  railways  should 
belong  to  the  railway  workers,  the  mines  to  the 
miners,  and  so  on.  The  duty  of  the  proletariat, 
M.  Sorel  maintained,  was  to  destroy  entirely  the 
existing  political  organisation  and  to  deprive  the 
State  and  the  local  authorities  of  all  their  func- 
tions, one  after  the  other,  in  order  to  transfer  them 
to  the  Trade  Unions;  "the  future  of  Socialism," 
he  said,  "  consists  in  the  autonomous  development 
of  the  Trade  Unions."  M.  Sorel  maintained  that 
the  Syndicalist  theory  was  a  logical  deduction  from 
the  principles  of  Karl  Marx,  and  there  is  no  doubt 


256         MY   SECOND  COUNTRY 

that  it  has  more  affinity  with  those  principles  than 
has  the  theory  of  a  bureaucratic  State  Socialism, 
for  it  aims  at  "  the  free  federation  of  all  men  " ;  but 
Marx  would  not  have  denied  all  control  over  pro- 
duction to  the  community  as  a  whole,  as  do  the 
Syndicalists.  Before  M.  Sorel  published  this  pam- 
phlet there  were  already  Trade  Unionists  in  France 
hostile  to  parliamentary  methods  and  opposed  to 
the  Socialist  Party  which  had  been  founded  by 
Jules  Guesde  and  Paul  Laf argue,  but  Sorel  was  the 
first  to  formulate  a  definite  Syndicalist  theory. 
Syndicalism  has  much  in  common  with  the  theories 
of  Proudhon  and  Bakounine.  The  General  Con- 
federation of  Labour,  commonly  known  as  the 
C.G.T.,  was  founded  in  1895,  but  at  first  it  had 
few  adherents  and  its  tendencies  were  not  strictly 
defined.  French  Trade  Unions,  however,  were 
from  the  first  revolutionary  in  their  character ;  they 
aimed  not  merely  at  improving  the  condition  of 
the  workers  by  raising  wages,  reducing  hours  of 
labour,  and  so  on,  but  at  a  radical  change  in  the 
whole  economic  system.  From  the  first  also  the 
French  Trade  Unionists  were  suspicious  of  parlia- 
mentary action  and  relied  on  economic  methods 
such  as  the  strike.  At  the  National  Congress  of 
the  Socialist  Party  held  at  St.  Mande  in  1896,  M. 
Millerand  propounded  a  programme  of  State 
Socialist  reforms  which  was  accepted  by  what 
came  to  be  called  the  "  reformist  "  section  of  the 
Socialists  as  distinguished  from  the  definitely  re- 
volutionary section  led  by  Jules  Guesde.  This 
widened  the  breach  between  the  Trade  Unionists 
and  the  Socialists  and  the  difference  between  them 
became  acute  in  1899,  when  M.  Millerand,  with  the 
approval  of  the  majority  of  the  Socialist  Party, 
accepted  office  in  the  Waldeck-Rousseau  Cabinet. 
A  coalition  of  Guesdists,  Anarchists,  Blanquists  and 


SOCIALISM,  SYNDICALISM       257 

other  "  anti-etatistes  "  was  formed,  which  became 
the  predominant  influence  in  the  General  Con- 
federation of  Labour.  At  its  congress  held  at 
Amiens  in  1906  the  Confederation  by  an  over- 
whelming majority  definitely  repudiated  parliamen- 
tary methods,  adopted  the  Syndicalist  theory,  and 
approved  of  the  general  strike  as  the  method  of 
achieving  the  social  revolution.  From  that  time 
until  the  outbreak  of  the  war  there  was  a  conflict 
between  the  Socialists  and  the  Syndicalists,  which 
sometimes  became  very  bitter  and  which  divided 
the  proletariat;  some  of  the  Syndicalists  attacked 
the  parliamentary  Socialists  more  violently  than 
the  bourgeois.  Lagardelle,  Pouget,  Griffuelhes, 
Sorel  and  others  published  in  1907  and  1908  pam- 
phlets in  which  they  set  forth  the  Syndicalist 
theories,  attacked  "  democratism  "  and  even  the 
principles  of  Marx,  and  preached  "  direct  action." 
Whereas  Sore!  in  1898  had  departed  very  little 
from  the  doctrines  of  Marx  and  Engels,  the  Syndi- 
calists now  became  definitely  anarchist  or  "  liber- 
taire." 

In  saying  that  the  Syndicalists  were  anarchist  I 
do  not  mean  that  they  necessarily  advocated  vio- 
lence or  preached  the  use  of  bombs  and  assassina- 
tion ;  they  were  anarchist  in  the  sense  that  they  ob- 
jected to  all  government,  but,  in  fact,  they  were 
not  so  far  from  Marx  and  Engels  as  some  of  them 
imagined,  for  they  admitted  the  necessity  of  organi- 
sation, that  is  to  say,  administration.  Their  quar- 
rel with  revolutionary  Socialists  in  this  regard  was 
little  more  than  verbal ;  both  wanted  to  substitute 
the  administration  of  things  for  the  government  of 
men.  The  real  difference  between  the  Socialists 
and  the  Syndicalists  was  that  the  latter  would 
entrust  administration  entirely  to  the  Trade  Unions 
or  Syndicates  of  workers  in  each  trade,  and  left 

s 


258         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

no  room  for  any  control  by  the  community  as  a 
whole.  The  term  "  libertaire  "  is  really  more 
accurate  than  "anarchist "  as  applied  to  the 
Syndicalists,  and  the  best  English  equivalent  for 
"  libertaire  "  is  "  liberal  "—not  "  Liberal,"  which 
means  a  member  of  a  particular  political  party. 
Liberalism,  in  the  true  sense  of  the  term,  is 
essentially  and  always  anti-etatiste.  Syndicalism 
is  non-parliamentary,  non-religious,  and  non- 
patriotic.  The  leading  Syndicalists  were  not,  of 
course,  individualist  anarchists  but  communist- 
anarchists,  which  is  only  another  name  for  liberal 
Socialists  as  opposed  to  State  Socialists;  the  term 
"  communism  "  is  used  in  France  in  the  sense  of 
"  collectivism,"  as  it  was  by  Marx  and  Engels,  and 
as  it  is  in  Russia.  There  was  in  the  Syndicalist 
ranks  a  small  group  of  individualist  anarchists, 
which  had  its  centre  in  M.  Gustave  Herve's  paper, 
La  Guerre  Sociale.  M.  Herve  himself  was  a  mem- 
ber of  the  Socialist  Party,  but  his  theories  at  that 
time  were  more  anarchist  than  socialist  and  he 
was  extremely  anti-patriotic.  But  he  never  had 
clear  ideas  on  any  subject  and  his  character  is 
admirably  summed  up  in  the  remark  of  a  friend, 
who  once  said  to  him  :  "  Tu  dis  tou jours  ce  que  tu 
penses,  mon  ami,  mais  tu  ne  penses  pas  "  (You 
always  say  what  you  think,  my  friend,  but  you 
don't  think).  Inconsequent,  impulsive,  and  inor- 
dinately vain,  M.  Herve  aimed  above  all  at  being 
conspicuous,  and  his  subsequent  conversion  to 
ultra-patriotic  Nationalism  was  not  at  all  surpris- 
ing; I  prophesied  it  more  than  ten  years  ago.  M. 
Herve  himself  has  always  been  disinterested  in 
money  matters  and  the  desire  of  gain  has  never 
been  a  factor  in  his  political  development ;  he  is  a 
man  of  simple  tastes  who  can  do  with  very  little 
money.  But  that  was  not  the  case  with  all  the 


SOCIALISM,  SYNDICALISM      259 

members  of  the  group  that  gathered  round  him,  on 
whom  his  erratic  and  capricious  character  had  a 
very  bad  influence ;  he  gave  them  a  love  of  violent 
language  often  with  little  meaning  and  under  his 
guidance  they  acquired  the  habit  of  speaking  with- 
out thinking.  Most  of  them  drifted  into  indivi- 
dualist anarchism  and  thence,  sooner  or  later,  into 
ordinary  criminality.  The  doctrine  of  "  individual 
expropriation  "  easily  became  the  excuse  for  theft 
and  even  burglary,  and  false  coining  was  adopted 
as  a  revolutionary  method,  at  first  on  the  pretext 
of  providing  money  for  the  "cause,"  but  before 
long  for  less  disinterested  motives.  During  a  cer- 
tain period  the  Guerre  Sociale  lived  chiefly  on 
the  proceeds  of  coining;  I  do  not  know  that  M. 
Herve  was  aware  of  the  fact,  but  he  probably  made 
as  little  inquiry  into  the  sources  of  the  funds  as 
did  M.  Cardinal  into  the  sources  of  his  income. 
The  exploits  of  Bonnot  and  Gamier,  who  had  begun 
as  individualist  anarchists  and  degenerated  into 
criminals,  certainly  not  of  an  ordinary  type,  dis- 
credited individualist  anarchism.  Nearly  all  the 
young  men  belonging  to  the  group  of  the  Guerre 
Sociale  turned  out  badly.  One  of  the  best  known 
was  the  brilliant  and  unfortunate  Miguel 
Almereyda,  who  was  ruined  by  his  expensive  tastes 
and  consequent  need  of  money,  and  who  eventually 
died  in  prison  in  mysterious  circumstances.  There 
was  not  the  smallest  evidence  that  he  was  guilty 
of  treason,  or  that  he  knowingly  received  money 
from  a  German  source,  but  it  is  certain  that  he 
was  not  particular  where  he  got  it  from  and 
was  ready  to  adapt  his  politics  to  suit  the  persons 
that  found  it. 

This  little  group  was  but  an  excrescence  on 
French  Syndicalism  and,  if  I  have  said  so  much 
about  it,  it  is  only  because  its  importance  has  often 

s  2 


260         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

been  exaggerated  and  it  is  desirable  to  reduce  it 
to  its  true  proportions.       Most  of  the  Syndicalist 
leaders  were  men  with  disinterested  motives  and 
some  of  them  were  men  of  great  capacity  and  intelli- 
gence.    The  great  utility  of  Syndicalism  lay  in  its 
repudiation  of  State  monopoly  and  its  insistence  on 
the  necessity  of  preparing  the  proletariat  to  use 
the  power  if  and  when  it  could  get  it.     Too  many 
Socialists  have  been  disposed  to  imagine  that  all 
that  was  necessary  was  to  capture  the  State  either 
by  parliamentary  action  or  other  methods  and  that 
the  establishment  of  a  Socialist  society  would  fol- 
low as  a  matter    of    course.       Lagardelle,    who, 
although  a  prominent  Syndicalist,  never  ceased  to 
be  a  member  of  the  Socialist  party,  said  with  truth 
in  his  famous  discussion  with  Jules  Guesde  at  the 
Socialist  Congress  at  Nancy,  in  1907,  that  a  Socialist 
society  would  not  issue  ready-made  from  a  revolu- 
tion or  from  the  capture  of  the  machinery  of  the 
State.     The  workmen,  he  said,  could  not  be  ready 
at   a   moment's   notice   to   replace   the   capitalists 
unless  they  had  previously  been  prepared  and  a 
long  preparation  would  be  necessary.     The  prole- 
tariat must  create  with  their  own  hands  a  whole 
system  of  institutions  intended  to  replace  the  bour- 
geois institutions  and  he  looked  to  the  Trade  Unions 
to  accomplish  that  task.1     This  is  sound  sense  :  it 
is  absurd  to  suppose  that,  if  the  proletariat  were 
not  already  organised  with  a  view  to  taking  over 
production,  the  mere  assumption  of  political  power 
by  a  few  Socialist  politicians  could  effect  any  real 
change.     A   Socialist  Parliament  with   a   Socialist 
Government  could  not  establish  Socialism;  society 

1  An  important  step  in  this  direction  has  now  been  taken 
by  the  formation  of  an  "  Economic  Council  of  Labour  "  composed 
of  representatives  of  the  C.G.T.  and  Government  servants, 
engineers,  teachers  and  others  agreeing  with  its  aims. 


SOCIALISM,  SYNDICALISM       261 

can    never    be    transformed    by    Act    of   Parlia- 
ment. 

Simultaneously  with  the  growth  of  Syndicalism 
the  Socialist  party  became  less  and  less  reformist 
and  more  and  more  revolutionary.  Jaures,  who 
had  supported  M.  Millerand  at  St.  Mande  in  1896, 
acquiesced  in  his  entry  into  the  Waldeck-Rousseau 
Cabinet  chiefly  because  of  the  necessity  of  concen- 
trating all  the  forces  of  the  Left  to  defeat  the  anti- 
Drey  fusards  and  the  Reaction.  But  when  that 
task  was  accomplished  the  Socialist  party  refused 
to  continue  the  policy  of  participation  in  a  bour- 
geois Government,  although  it  continued  to  act 
with  the  Bloc  of  the  Left  until  1906.  M.  Millerand 
had  to  leave  the  party,  and  when  MM.  Briand, 
Viviani,  and  Augagneur  subsequently  accepted 
Ministerial  office,  they  did  so  without  the  permis- 
sion of  the  party  and  were  expelled  from  it  in  con- 
sequence. The  amalgamation  in  1905  of  the  two 
French  Socialist  Parties,  that  led  by  Jaures  and  that 
led  by  Jules  Guesde,  brought  together  the  two  ten- 
dencies— the  reformist  and  the  revolutionary — and 
under  the  pressure  of  Syndicalism,  the  "  unified 
Socialist  party,"  as  it  was  called,  gradually  aban- 
doned reformism.  The  event  has  shown  that  the 
Syndicalist  movement  was  both  necessary  and 
valuable,  for  it  saved  French  Socialism  from 
etatisme.  The  Socialist  Party  continued  to  advo- 
cate legal  reforms  as  palliatives  of  the  capitalist 
system,  but  it  refused  to  follow  the  reformists  in 
making  such  reforms  the  whole  aim  of  Socialism 
in  the  belief  that  their  extension  would  ultimately 
lead  to  a  Socialist  State.  The  Socialist  Party  in 
Parliament  has,  however,  continued  to  attach  too 
much  importance  to  the  immediate  nationalisation 
of  certain  industries,  which  might  possibly  be  suit- 
ably converted  Into  public  monopolies  in  a  Socialist 


262         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

society,  but  which  the  existing  State  is  quite  incom- 
petent to  manage.  It  was,  in  my  opinion,  a  mis- 
take on  the  part  of  the  majority  of  the  Socialist 
Deputies  to  support  the  purchase  by  the  State  of 
the  Western  Railway  of  France  at  a  price  which 
made  the  transaction  a  fraud  on  the  taxpayers. 
When  their  attempts  to  get  the  price  reduced  had 
failed,  they  should  have  refused  to  take  any  respon- 
sibility for  the  purchase.  Even  since  the  war  the 
Socialist  Party  in  Parliament  has  demanded  that 
the  State  should  take  over  and  run  all  the  munition 
factories,  and  nationalise  the  railways,  the  mines, 
and  the  mercantile  marine.  It  would  certainly 
have  been  only  right  to  force  the  owners  of  the 
munition  factories  to  be  content  with  a  salary  and 
perhaps  a  commission  on  production,  but  had  the 
bureaucracy  attempted  to  run  the  factories,  the 
results  would  have  been  disastrous.  If  the  rail- 
ways, the  mines,  and  the  mercantile  marine  were 
converted  into  State  monopolies  in  present  condi- 
tions, they  would  certainly  be  grossly  mismanaged 
and  the  discredit  would  fall  on  Socialism.  The 
French  Socialist  party  would  do  far  more  useful 
work  and  win  much  more  credit  if  it  left  State 
monopolies  alone  and  concentrated  on  such  reforms 
as  I  have  ventured  to  suggest  in  another  chapter.1 
When  we  have  arrived  at  a  Socialist  society  it  will 
be  time  enough  to  consider  what  industries,  if  any, 
should  be  public  monopolies. 

The  war  disintegrated  both  Socialism  and  Syndi- 
calism. The  majority  of  the  adherents  of  both 
went  at  once  to  the  Front  and  there  was  a  sharp 
division  of  opinion  in  regard  to  the  war  among 
those  who  remained  behind ;  both  the  Socialist 
Party  and  the  General  Confederation  of  Labour 
were  split  in  two.  Curiously  enough,  the  Socialists 
*  See  pp.  113-130, 


SOCIALISM,  SYNDICALISM       263 

and  Syndicalists  that  had  been  most  extreme  in 
their  internationalism  and  even  anti-patriotism 
became  in  many  cases  the  most  ardent  supporters 
of  the  war ;  they  persuaded  themselves  that  it  was 
a  revolutionary  war  for  the  purpose  of  securing  the 
universal  triumph  of  democracy.  This  attitude  was 
an  interesting  revival  of  the  spirit  that  animated 
the  Parisian  Republicans  and  Revolutionaries  from 
1815  to  1870,  when  they  were  always  clamouring  for 
military  crusades  against  monarchies  and  despot- 
isms. Among  the  complex  causes  of  the  Commune 
of  Paris  in  1871  was  the  revolutionary  patriotism 
which  identified  the  cause  of  France  with  that  of 
the  Revolution  and  was  disgusted  at  what  it  con- 
sidered to  be  the  pusillanimous  policy  of  Thiers 
and  the  National  Assembly.  The  revival  of  the 
same  spirit  among  Socialists  and  Syndicalists  in 
1914  was  not,  therefore,  very  surprising,  especially 
in  the  case  of  the  older  men.  But  nobody  would 
have  anticipated  the  entry  into  a  bourgeois  Govern- 
ment for  "  National  Defence  "  of  Jules  Guesde, 
who  had  all  his  life  been  the  strongest  opponent 
of  co-operation  with  bourgeois  Governments  or  par- 
ties, had  opposed  the  opportunism  of  Jaures,  and 
had  declared  with  Karl  Marx  that  the  workman 
has  no  country.  There  is  no  reason  to  doubt  the 
sincerity  of  most  of  these  sudden  conversions — or 
reversions — but  in  some  cases  Socialists  and  Syndi- 
calists of  military  age  were  induced  to  give  a 
whole-hearted  support  to  the  war  by  a  judicious  dis- 
tribution of  exemptions  from  military  service. 
Nobody  was  more  bellicose  than  some  of  the 
"  embusques." 

Until  1917  the  supporters  of  war  to  the  bitter 
end — the  "  jusqu'auboutistes,"  as  they  were  called 
— retained  the  complete  control  both  of  the  Social- 
ist Party  and  of  the  General  Confederation  of 


264         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

Labour,  and  were  therefore  called  the  "  Majori- 
taires,"  but,  as  more  and  more  men  had  to  be  sent 
back  from  the  Front  to  the  munition  factories,  the 
strength  of  the  "  Minoritaires  "  or  Internationalists 
steadily  increased  and  they  were  in  a  majority  in 
the  rank  and  file  of  the  Socialist  party  long 
before  they  succeeded  in  capturing  the  or- 
ganisation, which  is  now  under  their  control. 
Indeed,  the  former  "  majoritaires  "  with  very 
few  exceptions,  have  returned  to  their  old 
principles  and  policy.1  Both  the  Socialist  Party 
and  the  General  Confederation  of  Labour  are  now 
once  more  definitely  internationalist  and  revolu- 
tionary ;  their  executives  in  May  1919  unanimously 
passed  a  vote  of  congratulation  to  the  crews  of  the 
French  warships  who  had  hoisted  the  Red  Flag  in 
the  Black  Sea  and  undertook  to  defend  them  by 
every  means  in  their  power. 

The  war  had  the  effect  of  bringing  the  Social- 
ists and  Syndicalists  together  and  appeasing  their 
differences.  The  division  in  their  respective  ranks 
in  regard  to  the  war  itself  helped  to  do  that,  for 
Socialist  and  Syndicalist  "  Majoritaires  "  acted 
together,  as  did  Socialist  and  Syndicalist  "  Minori- 
taires." Moreover,  the  experience  of  the  war  has 
led  to  modifications  of  theory  on  both  sides.  On 
the  one  hand,  as  has  been  said,  it  has  produced 
among  the  Socialists  a  strong  feeling  against 
Etatisme,  for  during  the  war  France  has  had  ex- 
perience of  the  complete  control  by  the  State  of  in- 
dustry and  commerce,  of  importation  and  expor- 
tation no  less  than  of  production,  and  the 

1  At  the  national  congress  of  the  Socialist  party  in  September 
1919  an  agreement  was  arrived  at  both  as  to  the  programme 
and  policy  of  the  party.  But  a  considerable  minority  of  the 
Extreme  Left  held  aloof  and  will  be  useful  in  keeping  the  majority 
up  to  the  mark. 


SOCIALISM,  SYNDICALISM       265 

experience  has  not  been  such  as  to  make 
Etatisme  popular.  French  industry  is  in  the 
hands  of  a  few  consortiums  of  capitalists,  which 
have  become  an  integral  part  of  the  State  and  to 
which  the  State  has  delegated  part  of  its  powers. 
The  last  thing  that  they  and  the  bureaucrats  have 
ever  considered  is  the  interest  of  the  wretched  con- 
sumer. At  the  same  time,  the  public  money  has 
been  squandered  with  reckless  disregard  of  the 
future  on  the  consoling  assumption  that  Germany 
would  pay.  Side  by  side  with  the  growing  feeling 
against  Etatisme  has  developed  the  reaction 
against  parliamentary  methods  already  mentioned 
in  a  previous  chapter,  and  an  increasing  tendency 
to  count  only  or  chiefly  on  direct  action.  In  fact, 
French  Socialism,  particularly  its  rank  and  file,  is 
becoming  more  and  more  libertaire;  it  has 
abandoned  reformist  and  State  Socialist  theories 
and  is  returning  to  the  conceptions  of  Marx  and 
Engels,  modified  by  recent  experience.  On  the 
other  hand,  there  is  a  distinct  tendency  on  the  part 
of  Trade  Unionists  to  modify  the  theory  of  pure 
Syndicalism  and  to  recognise  that  it  would  put  the 
consumer — that  is  to  say,  the  community  as  a 
whole — at  the  mercy  of  any  one  group  of  pro- 
ducers. The  time  is  therefore  ripe  for  a  synthesis 
between  Socialism  and  Syndicalism  and  that  syn- 
thesis will  be  arrived  at.  The  relations  between 
the  Socialist  Party  and  the  General  Confederation 
of  Labour  have  again  become  a  little  strained, 
chiefly  for  personal  reasons;  but  they  joined  to- 
gether during  the  war  in  the  Inter- Allied  Socialist 
and  Labour  Conferences,  and  there  is  every  reason 
to  hope  that  they  will  unite  in  the  formation  of  a 
new  International. 

Syndicalism,  as  we  have  seen,  was  in  its  origin 
simply  a  protest  against  the  reformist  tendencies 


266          MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

of  certain  leading  Socialists.  It  can  never  come  to 
terms  with  State  Socialism,  but  its  differences  with 
Revolutionary  Socialism  are  entirely  concerned 
with  questions  of  method  and  can  easily  be  ad- 
justed, especially  now  when  the  majority  of  Social- 
ists in  France  have  abandoned  all  hope  of  effecting 
anything  important  by  parliamentary  action.  The 
Commune  of  Paris — which  was  the  French  Soviet — 
will  in  the  future  be  the  model  for  French  Socialist 
action,  as  Engels  said  that  it  should  be,  and  the 
Syndicalists  may  well  rally  to  it.  In  the  new 
synthesis  between  Socialism  and  Syndicalism  the 
economic  function  of  the  State,  or  rather  of  the 
Administration,  will  be  what  the  Manchester 
Liberals  said  that  it  should  be — to  protect  the  in- 
terests of  the  consumer.  The  State  as  an  organ  of 
administration  will  replace  the  State  as  an  organ 
of  authority;  the  administration  of  things  will  re- 
place the  government  of  men.  Some  means  will 
be  found  of  conciliating  the  interests  of  the  com- 
munity as  a  whole  with  those  of  each  group  of  pro- 
ducers. That  is  the  principal  modification  that 
will  be  necessary  in  the  Syndicalist  theory  as  set 
forth  by  Sorel  in  1898 — the  defect  of  that  theory 
was  that  it  ignored  the  interests  of  the  consumers, 
that  is,  of  the  community  as  a  whole.1  The  prin- 
ciples of  Socialism  and  liberalism  are  not  so  com- 
pletely opposed  as  is  commonly  thought.  There 
has  been  too  violent  a  reaction  in  England  from  the 
doctrines  of  the  Manchester  Liberals,  who  were 
much  more  right  than  many  Socialists  imagine. 
They  were  right  in  saying  that  there  should  be  as 
little  government  as  possible;  they  were  right  in 

1  The  national  congress  of  the  C.G.T.  held  at  Lyons  in  Septem- 
ber 1919  modified  the  Syndicalist  theory  by  accepting  the 
joint  control  of  industry  by  producers  and  consumers.  This 
reconciles  Syndicalism  with  Marxist  Socialism. 


SOCIALISM,  SYNDICALISM       267 

saying  that  the  only  economic  function  of  the  State 
is  to  protect  the  consumers;  even  the  doctrine  of 
laisser-faire  has  much  to  be  said  for  it.  The  State 
has  been  obliged  to  intervene  to  protect  the  worker 
from  the  results  of  the  capitalist  system,  but  in 
just  and  reasonable  economic  conditions  that  would 
no  longer  be  necessary.  The  object  of  Socialism  is 
to  give  as  equal  an  opportunity  as  possible  to  every 
individual;  there  will  never  be  absolute  equality, 
for  some  individuals  will  always  be  more  capable 
than  others,  but,  if  all  start  fair,  it  is  to  the  general 
interest  to  let  the  best  man  win.  The  mistake  of 
the  Manchester  Liberals  lay  in  thinking  that  the 
best  man  would  win  in  existing  economic  conditions 
and  in  supposing  that  in  a  system  of  private  pro- 
perty liberty  could  ever  be  possible  for  the  pro- 
pertyless.  Their  principles  applied  to  capitalist 
conditions  meant  misery  for  the  majority  of  the 
population;  Socialist  conditions  will  make  their 
application  to  a  great  extent  possible,  for  the 
socialisation  of  the  means  of  production  is 
the  only  method  of  attaining  individualism  and 
economic  freedom.  The  opposition  of  liberals  to 
State  Socialism  is  natural  and  reasonable,  for  State 
Socialism  is  as  incompatible  with  liberty  as  is  the 
capitalist  system,  and  the  servile  State  is  no  im- 
aginary danger.  But  there  is  no  incompatibility 
between  liberalism  and  revolutionary  Socialism. 
They  agree  in  detesting  authority,  they  agree  in  dis- 
trusting the  State,  they  agree  in  making  liberty  the 
supreme  ideal — absolute  liberty  in  the  expression 
of  opinion,  however  dangerous,  immoral,  or  blas- 
phemous it  may  appear  to  the  majority;  in  other 
matters  a  liberty  necessarily  limited  only  by  the 
liberty  of  others.  Socialism  as  a  political  creed  is 
transitory;  liberalism  is  eternal.  For  if  and  when 
a  Socialist  society  is  established  there  will  be  no 


268          MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

need  of  a  Socialist  party — the  question  will  be  no 
longer  at  issue — but  there  will  always  in  any 
economic  conditions  be  people  that  are  on  the  side 
of  authority  and  people  that  are  on  the  side  of 
liberty,  those  whose  tendency  is  conservative  and 
those  whose  tendency  is  progressive.  Socialism 
might  be  liberal  or  anti-liberal,  "  liber taire  "  or 
"  autoritaire  ";  it  is  much  to  be  hoped  that  it  will 
be  liberal,  and  all  the  signs  in  France  at  any  rate 
point  to  that. 

At  the  very  beginning  of  this  book  I  said  that 
there  were  signs  in  France  that  the  present  regime 
was  nearing  its  end,  and  I  have  tried  to  show  what 
those  signs  are  and  what  are  their  causes.  The 
question  is,  What  will  replace  the  present  regime 
should  it  come  to  an  end?  The  discredit  into 
which  French  political  institutions,  and  in  particu- 
lar the  Parliament,  have  fallen  might  lead  either  to 
reaction  or  to  revolution.  If  the  matter  rested 
with  the  bourgeoisie  reaction  would  be  certain.  For 
several  years  before  the  war  the  bourgeoisie  had 
been  becoming  more  and  more  reactionary  and 
anti-democratic,  and  this  tendency  had  been  par- 
ticularly marked  among  the  intellectuals.  Some, 
like  Brunetiere  and  Coppee,  turned  to  the  Church 
as  the  last  hope  of  authority ;  others,  like  Sorel,  the 
first  apostle  of  Syndicalism,  became  Royalists.  The 
war  has  greatly  strengthened  the  reaction.  Drey- 
fusards  like  M.  Joseph  Reinach  and  M.  Ernest 
Lavisse  have  vied  with  M.  Maurice  Barres  and  M. 
M aurras  in  the  violence  of  their  Chauvinism  and  the 
fervour  of  their  patriotic  sentiments.  The  best  evi- 
dence of  the  bourgeois  reaction  is  the  proposal 
of  the  majority  of  the  Paris  Municipal  Council  to 
erect  a  monument  to  the  late  M.  Paul  DeroulMe, 
whose  whole  life  was  devoted  to  the  advocacy  of  a 
war  of  revenge  against  Germany,  and  who  was 


SOCIALISM,  SYNDICALISM       269 

banished  for  conspiring  against  the  Republic.  That 
proposal  reveals  the  fact  that  in  France,  as  else- 
where, there  was  a  party  that  wanted  war  and  that 
it  was  much  stronger  than  was  generally  supposed 
abroad;  indeed,  I  believe  that  it  included  the 
majority  of  the  rentier  class.  The  peasants  and  the 
proletariat  were  opposed  to  war,  so  were  the  finan- 
ciers and  the  bulk  of  the  industrial  and  commercial 
capitalists  not  interested  in  the  production  of  war 
material,  but  the  great  metallurgical  interest — the 
most  powerful  capitalist  group  in  France — wanted 
war,  and  it  had  a  large  proportion  of  the  rentiers  on 
its  side.  Above  all,  it  had  the  enthusiastic 
co-operation  of  the  military  interest  and  the  General 
Staff.  The  great  majority  of  French  professional 
officers  are  reactionaries — a  large  proportion  of 
them  belong  to  the  real  or  imitation  noblesse,  which 
despises  industry  and  commerce  and  will  not  serve 
the  Republic  in  a  civil  capacity.  They  hoped  that 
the  profession  of  arms  might  some  day  give  them 
the  opportunity  of  upsetting  the  Republic  and 
they  counted  on  a  war  as  being  likely  to  afford  the 
best  opportunity.  This  is  no  libel  on  the  French 
reactionaries,  for  the  design  was  openly  avowed 
long  before  1914  by  M.  Charles  Maurras  and  other 
reactionary  writers.  The  French  militarists  and 
reactionaries  seemed  to  have  been  rendered  power- 
less by  their  defeat  in  connection  with  the  Dreyfus 
affair,  and  they  became,  indeed,  unable  directly  to 
influence  French  policy;  but,  as  I  have  said  else- 
where, they  succeeded  in  exercising  influence  in- 
directly through  the  intermediary  of  the  Govern- 
ment of  the  Tsar,  thanks  to  the  close  relations  be- 
tween the  French  and  Russian  General  Staffs.  It 
was,  for  instance,  the  French  General  Staff  that 
originated  the  Three  Year  Service  Law  of  1918, 
but  it  was  imposed  on  France  by  the  Russian 


270         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

Government.  When  M.  Viviani  formed  his  first  and 
abortive  Cabinet  after  the  General  Election  of  1914, 
M.  Paleologue,  who  was  then  French  Ambassador 
at  Petrograd,  attended  the  first  Cabinet  meeting 
and  intimated  to  it  that  the  Russian  Government 
insisted  on  the  maintenance  of  the  Three  Year 
Service.  This  insolent  interference  in  the  internal 
affairs  of  France  caused  the  resignation  of  M. 
Georges  Ponsot  and  M.  Justin  Godard,  which  led  to 
the  break-up  of  the  Ministry.  The  Russian  Govern- 
ment had  then  already  determined  to  drag  France 
into  war ;  unhappily,  it  found  in  France  itself  poli- 
ticians and  journalists  as  well  as  soldiers  only  too 
willing  to  acquiesce  in  its  designs.  It  was  not  for 
nothing  that  the  Russian  Government  subsidised 
the  Matin,  the  Figaro  and  certain  other  Parisian 
papers.  One  London  paper  at  least  shared  in  the 
largesse  of  the  Tsar's  Government  and  it  is  quite 
possible  that  there  were  others.  The  final  triumph 
of  French  and  Russian  militarism  and  reaction  was 
won  at  Versailles  on  January  17,  1913 ;  from  that 
day  war  was  certain.1  During  the  war  militarism 
and  reaction  dominated  France,  and  their  domina- 
tion became  complete  when  they  succeeded  in  put- 
ting M.  Georges  Clemenceau  at  the  head  of  the 
French  Government  to  carry  out  a  policy  in  flagrant 
contradiction  with  the  principles  that  he  had  pro- 
fessed throughout  his  long  political  career.  I  doubt 
whether  the  militarists  and  the  reactionaries  will 
surrender  their  power,  if  they  can  help  it,  without 
a  struggle.  They  may  take  advantage  of  a  moment 
of  disorder  due  to  the  general  discontent  and  the 
widespread  misery  that  the  war  has  caused  in 

1  In  the  train  from  Versailles  to  Paris,  on  the  evening  of  the 
presidential  election,  a  well-known  French  writer  said  :  "  During 
the  septennate  of  M.  Poincare  we  shall  have  first  the  Throe 
Year  Service  and  then  war." 


SOCIALISM,  SYNDICALISM       271 

France  to  attempt  a  coup  d'etat.  Whether  such 
an  attempt  would  succeed  depends  on  the  army, 
and  I  very  much  doubt  whether  the  army  would 
support  it ;  even  if  it  did  succeed,  it  would  not  be 
long-lived,  and  would  almost  certainly  be  followed 
by  a  social  revolution. 

I  am,  however,  disposed  to  think  that  the  revolu- 
tion will  come  without  any  intermediary  stage. 
The  economic  and  financial  situation  of  France  is 
such  that  no  solution  is  possible  except  that  of  re- 
pudiation of  the  National  Debt — and  that  means 
revolution  and  the  end  of  the  capitalist  system. 
It  is  probably  too  late  to  avert  revolution  by  con- 
stitutional and  legislative  reforms ;  the  bourgeoisie 
has  missed  its  chance,  as  did  the  noblesse  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  and  the  situation  of  the  bour- 
geois Republic  is  as  hopeless  as  was  that  of  the 
Monarchy,  in  1789.  The  only  possible  chance  of 
saving  itself  open  to  the  bourgeoisie  is  that  of  imme- 
diately consenting  to  a  large  levy  on  capital,  but 
I  believe  that  it  is  too  late  even  for  that  to  save  it, 
and  in  any  case  the  French  bourgeoisie  will  never 
consent  to  any  pecuniary  sacrifice.  It  is  blinded 
by  its  avarice  and  egotism.  Its  representatives  in 
Parliament  can  think  of  no  better  method  of  deal- 
ing with  the  situation  than  that  of  increasing 
indirect  taxation  in  a  country  where  the  cost  of 
living  was  in  May  1919  four  times  as  high  as  in 
1910.  Once  more  the  bourgeoisie  tries  to  shift  the 
financial  burden  on  to  the  backs  of  the  workers, 
who  are  already  hardly  able  to  exist.  Does  history 
show  any  example  of  more  blind,  more  crass 
stupidity?  If  the  French  bourgeoisie  shares  the 
fate  of  the  noblesse,  it  may,  indeed,  be  said  to  it : 
"  Tu  Pas  voulu,  Georges  Dandin !  >: 

The  French  Socialist  Party  has  not,  of  course, 
abandoned   parliamentary  action.       It  issued  an 


272         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

electoral  manifesto  in  preparation  for  the  General 
Election  of  1919,  which  contained  a  programme  of 
immediate  reforms,  including  an  amendment  of  the 
Constitution.     But  that  very  manifesto  said  that 
reforms    were  not  enough;  as  I  have    said    in    a 
previous   chapter,   it  declared  the  necessity  of  a 
social  revolution  to  be  organised  by  the  dictator- 
ship of  the  proletariat.     This  is  an  admission  that 
Socialism  cannot  be  established  by  Acts  of  Parlia- 
ment.    If  Socialism  meant  the  transference  of  in- 
dustry to  the  State,  no  doubt  one  industry  after 
another  might  be  nationalised  by  Parliament,  but 
it  does  not  mean  that.     It  means  the  transference 
of    the    whole  of  industry  to  the  control    of    the 
workers.     Such  a  change  cannot  be  effected  in  a 
piecemeal  fashion;  it  is  in  itself  a  revolution  and 
can    be    effected  only  by  revolutionary    methods. 
Persons    calling    themselves    Socialists    that    are 
afraid  of  the  word  "  revolution  "  are  not  Socialists 
but    merely    Etatistes.       "  Not     revolution,     but 
evolution,"  we  are  sometimes  told,  as  if  anything 
could  be  evolved  out  of  its  opposite.       Socialism 
may  be  right  or  wrong,  but,  in  any  case,  it  is  the 
exact  opposite  of  capitalism  and  can  no  more  be 
evolved  out  of  it  than  a  Republic  can  be  evolved 
out     of  a   Monarchy.       The   Monarchy    must    be 
abolished  before  a  Republic  can  be  set  up,   and 
capitalism  must  be  abolished  before  Socialism  can 
be  established.     Capitalism  will  never  be  abolished 
by  an  Act  of  Parliament.       Seeing  the  enormous 
pull  that  the  moneyed  interests  must  always  have 
in  an  election  in  our  present  social  conditions,  if 
only   because    elections   cost   so    much   money, 
doubt  whether  a  majority  could  ever  be  obtained  at 
the  polls  for  the  abolition  of  capitalism.     And  if  it 
were,  the  majority  would  be  paralysed  by  the  par- 
liamentarv  machine  and  stifled  in  procedure  and 


SOCIALISM,  SYNDICALISM       273 

standing  orders.  While  time  was  being  wasted  over 
these  formalities  the  capitalist  classes  would  be 
organising  forcible  resistance.  They  would  not 
restrict  themselves  to  constitutional  methods ;  they 
never  have  when  their  interests  were  seriously 
threatened.  The  men  who  used  force  to  repress 
the  revolutions  in  Russia  and  Hungary  would 
not  shrink  from  the  use  of  force  to  repress  a  social 
revolution  in  their  own  country,  even  if  it  were 
being  made  by  constitutional  methods.  But  it 
never  can  be  :  a  constitutionalist  Socialist  is  a  con- 
tradiction in  terms ;  Socialists  are  out  to  destroy 
the  whole  constitution,  economic  and  political,  of 
existing  society  If  and  when  the  proletariat 
decides  to  act,  it  will  not  employ  the  cumber- 
some machinery  of  the  parliamentary  system 
when  it  has  other  and  far  more  effective  means  at 
its  disposal.  The  transformation  of  society  is  much 
more  than  a  mere  political  change.  Socialism  in- 
volves the  substitution  of  an  economic  for  the  poli- 
tical system  of  social  organisation — of  social  for 
political  democracy — and  it  can  be  brought  about 
only  by  economic  methods,  not  by  political  ones 

Marx  and  Engels  and  the  French  Socialist  Party 
are  right :  the  dictatorship  of  the  proletariat  is  the 
only  method  by  which  Socialism  can  ever  be  estab- 
lished. I  know  that  the  phrase  "  dictatorship  of  the 
proletariat  "  makes  the  hair  even  of  some  worthy 
persons  imagining  themselves  to  be  Socialists 
stand  on  end,  but  they  will  have  to  get  used  to  it. 
And  really  there  is  nothing  very  terrible  about  it. 
It  does  not  mean  the  permanent  oppression  of  one 
class  of  the  community  by  another,  but  is  merely 
a  temporary  measure  for  effecting  the  transition 
from  a  capitalist  to  a  socialist  society— nothing 
more,  in  fact,  than  the  application  of  the  common- 
sense  principle  that  a  revolution  can  be  made  only 

T 


274         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

by  people  that  believe  in  it  and  want  it.  In  the 
nature  of  things  the  dictatorship  of  the  proletariat 
cannot  be  permanent,  for  in  a  socialist  society  the 
proletariat  will  cease  to  exist;  there  will  be  no 
proletariat  and  no  bourgeoisie,  but  only  one  class, 
that  of  workers  with  hand  or  brain.  The  phrase 
"  dictatorship  of  the  proletariat  ?!>  must  not  be 
taken  in  too  literal  a  sense,  for  the  term  "  prole- 
tariat "  in  this  connection  includes  all  that  are  on 
the  side  of  the  proletariat.  Lenin  himself  never 
belonged  to  the  proletariat  and,  although  I  am  a 
bourgeois,  I  hope  not  only  to  live  to  see  the  dicta- 
torship of  the  proletariat,  but  also  to  have  the 
honour  of  assisting  in  it.  It  means,  in  fact,  no 
more  than  that  during  the  transition  from  one 
state  of  society  to  another — that  is  to  say,  during 
the  revolutionary  period  when  rapid  decisions  will 
be  necessary  and  time  cannot  be  wasted  on  useless 
discussion — the  anti-revolutionary  minority  must 
be  excluded  from  the  control  of  affairs,  as  the 
Royalists  were  excluded  from  the  National  Con- 
vention. There  will,  no  doubt,  be  discussions  and 
differences  of  opinion  among  the  revolutionaries — 
probably  too  many  of  them — and  the  majority  will 
have  to  decide,  but  time  cannot  be  spent  on  dis- 
cussing the  revolution  itself  with  people  that  are 
opposed  to  it.  Moreover,  although  a  Socialist 
society  will  not  allow  persons  that  will  not  work  to 
starve,  it  will  certainly  not  give  them  political 
rights,  unless,  of  course,  they  are  incapacitated 
from  working  by  age  or  any  other  cause.1 
Even  if  it  be  true  that  a  majority  for  the  aboli- 

1  The  alleged  atrocities  committed  in  Russia  are  not  a  necessary 
result  of  the  dictatorship  of  the  proletariat.  And,  as  Mr.  Arthur 
Ransome  has  said,  before  forming  an  opinion  on  what  has 
happened  in  Russia,  it  is  desirable  to  "  demand  something  more 
to  go  upon  than  second-hand  reports  of  wholly  irrelevant 
atrocities  committed  by  one  side  or  the  other,  and  often  by 


SOCIALISM,  SYNDICALISM       275 

tion  of  capitalism  could  not  be  obtained  at  a  general 
election,  that  does  not  prove  that  the  majority  of 
the  proletariat  would  be  opposed  to  Socialism. 
There  is  never  a  straight  issue  at  a  general  election 
—the  issues  are  always  confused — and  its  result  is 
less  an  indication  of  the  real  feeling  of  the  majority 
of  the  country  than  a  tribute  to  the  ability  of  par- 
ticular party  wire-pullers.  The  English  general 
election  of  December  1918  proved  nothing  except 
that  Mr.  Lloyd  George  is  a  very  clever  man;  it 
certainly  did  not  indicate  the  feeling  of  the  coun- 
try. One  must  not  confuse  the  representative 
system  with  democracy — even  mere  political  demo- 
cracy. The  present  political  system  in  England  and 
France  is  not  democratic  even  hi  the  purely  political 
sense ;  it  is  a  device  for  persuading  the  masses  of  the 
people  that  they  are  ruling  themselves  when,  in 
fact,  they  are  being  ruled  by  the  capitalists.  Some- 
body— was  it  Jean-Jacques  Rousseau? — said  that 

neither  one  side  nor  the  other,  but  by  irresponsible  scoundrels 
who,  in  the  natural  turmoil  of  the  greatest  convulsion  of  our 
civilisation,  escape  temporarily  here  and  there  from  any  kind 
of  control."  ("Six  Weeks  in  Russia  in  1919,"  Introduction, 

&vi.).  Mr.  Ransome  himself  has  given  us  something  more.  It 
no  doubt  true  that  there  have  been  indefensible  interferences 
with  individual  liberty  both  in  Russia  and  Hungary,  such  as  the 
refusal  to  allow  any  newspaper  to  be  published  without  a  licence 
from  the  Administration.  But  to  describe  such  practices  as 
"  Marxist  "  is  absurd  ;  there  is  not  a  word  in  the  writings  of 
Karl  Marx  to  justify  them,  nor  are  they  in  the  least  essential 
to  the  dictatorship  of  the  proletariat  as  Marx  and  Engels  under- 
stood it.  They  are  the  result  of  a  deplorable  Jacobin  spirit  on 
the  part  of  Russian  and  Hungarian  revolutionary  leaders,  and 
they  are  likely  to  be  as  fatal  to  any  revolution  that  persists  in  them 
as  were  Jacobin  methods  to  the  French  Revolution.  Not  only  is 
it  indefensible  on  the  part  of  Socialists  to  imitate  the  methods 
of  despotic  Governments,  but  it  is  also  a  profound  mistake,  as 
past  experience  has  shown.  Social  democracy  will  never  be 
successful  unless  it  remains  true  to  the  principle  of  liberty. 
"  Liberty,  Equality,  Fraternity "  are  no  doubt  ideological 
abstractions  in  the  mouth  of  a  defender  of  bourgeois  society, 
but  Socialism  can  make  them  realities. 

T  2 


276         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

the  English  were  free  once  in  seven  years  and  the 
rest  of  the  time  they  were  slaves.  That  is  no  longer 
quite  true,  for  they  are  now  free  once  in  five  years, 
but  even  then  their  freedom  is  limited  to  a  choice 
between  two  or  three  gentlemen  nominated  by  some 
caucus  or  other.  Not  only  is  there  in  the  intervals 
no  sort  of  popular  control  over  Parliament,  but  the 
control  of  Parliament  over  the  Executive  is  rapidly 
disappearing  and  the  government  of  England  is 
becoming  more  and  more  bureaucratic. 

Nevertheless,  it  is  undoubtedly  true  that,  if  and 
when  there  is  a  social  revolution  in  France  or  any- 
where else,  it  will  be  the  work  of  a  minority,  like 
all  great  movements  in  the  history  of  the  world; 
but  it  will  be  successful  only  if  it  has  the  acquies- 
cence of  the  majority.  When  has  the  majority 
ever  done  anything  of  itself  ?  M.  Alfred  Loisy 
speaks  somewhere  of  "  those  who,  while  thinking 
with  the  Church,  also  think  for  her  " ;  the  majority 
will  always  be  guided  by  those  who,  while  thinking 
with  it,  also  think  for  it.  That  is  what  makes 
democracy  possible.  Renan  said  that  the  only  thing 
that  gave  him  any  conception  of  infinity  was 
human  stupidity;  if  we  are  to  wait  for  changes 
until  the  majority  of  human  beings  begin  to  think 
for  themselves  we  shall  wait  till  doomsday.  But 
it  is  a  great  mistake  to  suppose  that  any  particular 
class  is  necessarily  more  intelligent  than  another; 
the  bourgeoisie  is  no  more  intelligent  in  the  mass 
than  the  proletariat,  and  an  oligarchy  exercised  by 
a  class  is  an  absurdity.  Nothing  could  be  less  de- 
fensible than  a  property  qualification;  where  does 
one  find  more  stupid  people  than  among  successful 
business  men  ?  Everything  that  has  been  done  in 
the  world  has  been  done  by  individuals;  the 
whole  of  progress  depends  on  the  triumph  of  indivi- 
dual intelligence  over  collective  stupidity.  One  of 


SOCIALISM,  SYNDICALISM       277 

the  strongest  arguments  for  Socialism  is  that  by 
removing  the  unfair  advantage  given  to  some  in- 
dividuals— often  among  the  most  stupid — by  the 
possession  of  property  and  the  handicap  placed  on 
other  individuals — sometimes  among  the  most 
intelligent— by  the  fact  that  they  possess  none,  it 
seems  likely  to  facilitate  the  triumph  of  the  in- 
telligent. 

French  Socialists  and  the  French  proletariat  in 
general  are,  then,  now  convinced  that  only  by 
direct  action  can  they  obtain  what  they  want;  in 
fact,  the  proletariat  has  never  obtained  anything  of 
much  importance  except  by  direct  action  or  the 
threat  of  it.  And  has  not  Sir  Edward  Carson  pro- 
vided a  valuable  object-lesson  of  its  effectiveness  ? 
But  direct  action  does  not  in  the  least  imply  vio- 
lence and  bloodshed.  Revolution,  if  we  consult  the 
dictionary,  means  "  complete  change,  turning  up- 
side down,  great  reversal  of  conditions,  fundamental 
reconstruction,"  and  it  may  be  accomplished  with- 
out bloodshed  or  violence.  The  modern  revo- 
lutionary method  is  the  general  strike,  not 
barricades  in  the  street.  That  is  the  form  that  direct 
action  will  take,  and,  if  the  general  strike  be  pro- 
perly organised  and  the  strikers  hold,  it  can 
accomplish  in  a  few  days  without  bloodshed  or 
violence  what  it  would  take  years  or  generations  to 
accomplish  by  constitutional  methods,  if  they  could 
ever  accomplish  it.  It  is,  unfortunately,  possible, 
if  not  probable,  that  a  revolution  will  not  be  per- 
fectly peaceful,  for  the  simple  reason  that  the 
capitalist  class  is  sure  to  use  violence,  if  it  can,  to 
repress  it.  Whether  and  how  far  it  will  be  able  to 
use  it  depends  on  the  soldiers ;  the  more  completely 
the  proletariat  is  organised,  the  less  likelihood  there 
will  be  of  violence.  The  object  of  the  general  strike 
is  to  destroy  the  capitalist  system — it  is  the  destruc- 


278         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

tive  side  of  the  revolution  which  must  come  first; 
the  constructive  work  of  the  revolution  will  be  done 
by  the  dictatorship  of  the  proletariat,  which  will 
follow. 

In  the  introduction  to  the  German  translation, 
published  in  1891,  of  his  book,  "  La  Guerre  civile 
en  France,"  Engels  said  :  "  The  German  Philistines 
are  always  filled  with  a  holy  terror  at  the  words  : 
dictatorship  of  the  proletariat.  Would  you  like  to 
know,  gentlemen,  what  that  dictatorship  means  ? 
Look  at  the  Commune  of  Paris.  That  was  the  dic- 
tatorship of  the  proletariat."  I  do  not  doubt,  as  I 
have  said  before,  that  the  Paris  Commune  will  be 
the  model  on  which,  in  the  event  of  a  revolution  in 
France,  the  dictatorship  of  the  proletariat  will  be 
organised,  with  the  necessary  modification  of  repre- 
sentation by  occupations.  The  autonomous  Com- 
mune is  the  natural  unit  from  which  the  Federative 
Communist  Republic  can  be  built  up.  We  have 
failed  to  secure  even  political  democracy  be- 
cause we  have  begun  at  the  wrong  end — 
with  the  State.  Democracy  must  begin  from 
the  source,  must  start  with  the  small  local 
organisation,  and  the  larger  organisation  must 
be  formed  by  federating  the  smaller  ones.  That, 
in  fact,  is  how  the  beginnings  of  democracy  hap- 
pened :  the  first  embryo  democracies  were  free 
towns,  and  it  was  a  misfortune  for  the  world  when 
the  free  towns  of  Europe  were  absorbed  into  States 
and  Empires.  The  States  and  Empires  have  grudg- 
ingly restored  a  certain  amount  of  local  liberty, 
varying  in  different  countries,  but  the  natural  evolu- 
lution  of  democracy  was  checked.  In  England  the 
course  of  events  was  different :  we  invented  national 
representative  government,  which  other  countries 
have  imitated.  It  did  valuable  work  in  its  time, 
but  it  is  now  out  of  date.  A  new  beginning  has  to 


SOCIALISM,  SYNDICALISM       279 

be  made  :  we  must  return  to  the  free  town  and  start 
with  local  liberty,  building  up  from  that  interna- 
tional social  democracy.  The  province  will  be  a  fede- 
ration of  free  communes,  the  country  a  federation  of 
free  provinces,  and  the  civilised  world  a  federation 
of  free  countries.  The  commune  will  be  completely 
autonomous  in  matters  that  concern  itself  alone; 
the  province  completely  autonomous  in  matters  that 
concern  the  collective  interests  of  the  communes  of 
which  it  is  composed ;  the  country  completely  auto- 
nomous in  matters  that  touch  the  collective  in- 
terests of  all  its  provinces.  Neither  will  have  any 
power  outside  its  own  borders;  the  country,  like 
the  province  and  the  commune,  will  be  an  adminis- 
trative area  and  no  more.  There  will  be  boun- 
daries, but  no  more  frontiers,  political  or 
economic.  Socialism  will  destroy,  not  only  the 
capitalist  system,  but  also  the  Sovereign  In- 
dependent State  claiming  to  be  a  law  unto 
itself  and  to  exercise  authority  even  outside  its 
own  borders.  Only  on  that  condition  will  it  ever 
be  possible  to  get  rid  of  war.  Just  as  the  absolute 
independence  of  the  individual  would  be  fatal  to 
any  social  organisation,  so  the  absolute  indepen- 
dence of  the  State  is  fatal  to  international  comity. 
Nationalism,  political  and  economic,  must  be 
abolished  if  we  want  permanent  peace,  and  Social- 
ism proposes  to  abolish  it.  One  of  the  excuses  most 
often  used  by  Governments  for  interference  in  other 
countries — that  of  the  necessity  of  protecting  their 
own  subjects  abroad — would  be  removed  by  inter- 
national Socialism,  for  everybody  would  be  the 
citizen  of  the  place  where  he  happened  to  be  living, 
that  is  to  say,  the  citizen  of  the  world.  The  official 
commentary  on  the  Covenant  of  the  Holy  Alliance 
called  the  League  of  Nations,  said  that  "  if  the 
nations  of  the  future  are  in  the  main  selfish,  grasp- 


280         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

ing  and  bellicose,  no  instrument  or  machinery  will 
restrain  them."  One  might  as  well  say — no  doubt 
our  remote  forefathers  did  say — the  same  thing 
about  individuals.  Such  an  assertion  is  a  denial 
of  the  possibility  of  any  sort  of  social  organisation 
and  abandons  the  world  to  anarchy.  There  is  no 
intrinsic  impossibility  in  preventing  war;  the  diffi- 
culty is  that  too  many  of  those  who  profess  to  will 
the  end  do  not  will  the  means.  Human  beings,  or 
many  of  them,  will  always  be  selfish,  grasping,  and 
bellicose — collectively  even  more  than  individually, 
for  the  collectivity  is  always  inferior  to  the  indivi- 
dual— and  the  way  to  prevent  war  is  to  arrange 
such  conditions  as  to  make  it  impossible.  War 
would  not  be  possible  in  a  system  of  international 
Socialism  in  which  armaments  would  be  sup- 
pressed, the  Sovereign  Independent  State  destroyed 
and  economic  frontiers  abolished  by  universal  Free 
Trade ;  the  countries  would  be  so  dependent  on  one 
another  that  none  of  them  could  afford  to  go  to 
war.  War  between  France  and  Germany  would  be- 
come as  unthinkable  as  war  between  Lyons  and  Mar- 
seilles. It  is  the  growing  conviction  that  this  is  the 
only  way  of  preventing  war  that  has  been  one  of 
the  chief  factors  in  the  increase  of  Socialist  and 
revolutionary  opinions  in  France ;  the  conversions 
to  Socialism  at  the  Front  were  innumerable. 

Not  idealism — or  rather  ideology — but  realism 
is  the  basis  of  the  revolutionary  movement  in 
France.  Modern  Socialism,  especially  in  France, 
is  not  based  on  any  belief  in  the  perfectibility  of 
human  nature,  but  on  a  frank  recognition  of  its 
defects.  It  does  not  count  on  a  change  of  hearts. 
The  people  who  say  that  nothing  can  be  done  by 
international  organisation  or  changed  economic 
conditions  are  not  realists,  but  either  fools  or  hum- 
bugs ;  in  the  latter  case  they  say  that  nothing  can 


SOCIALISM,  SYNDICALISM       281 

be  done  because  it  is  not  to  their  interest  that  the 
necessary  measures  should  be  taken.  In  fact, 
nothing  can  be  done  to  improve  the  world  except 
by  economic  measures;  the  only  way  in  which 
human  nature  can  be  modified  or  ever  has  been 
modified  is  by  food,  climate  and  economic  con- 
ditions. Morality,  as  anybody  can  see  that 
chooses  to  use  his  eyes,  is  chiefly  a  matter  of 
climate  and  environment,  in  so  far  as  it  is  not  a 
matter  of  good  or  bad  taste.  Climate  and  environ- 
ment have  altered  racial  characteristics  and  pro- 
duced new  races.1  The  economic  interpretation  of 
history  remains  the  true  one ;  every  great  move- 
ment in  history  has  had  an  economic  cause — I  do 
not  say  as  its  only  cause,  but  the  economic  cause 
always  predominates.  This  truth  is  perhaps  more 
readily  grasped  by  the  rationalist  and  realist 
French  mind  than  by  our  more  sentimental  men- 
tality, and  that  is  one  of  the  chief  reasons  why 
Socialism  is  gaining  ground  in  France.  The  French 
proletariat  has  been  sickened  of  ideology  by  that 
well-meaning  bourgeois  ideologist,  Mr.  Woodrow 
Wilson,  whose  ignominious  failure  is  an  example  of 
the  lamentable  consequences  of  ill-informed  senti- 
mentalijm  and  windy  rhetoric,  especially  when 
they  are  combined  with  vanity  and  ambition.  It 
is  said  that  one  of  the  reasons  why  Mr.  Wilson 
yielded  vas  that  he  feared  a  revolution  in  France 
if  he  retred  from  the  Peace  Conference.  I  should 

1  The  most  striking  example  of  the  superiority  of  climate 
and  environment  to  rr  3e  is,  of  course,  the  United  States  of 
America.  I*  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  population  is  a  mixture 
of  all  the  European  races,  a  very  definite  racial  type  has  been 
evolved,  which  has  certain  physical  characteristics  of  the  original 
inhabitants  of  Sorth  America,  although  there  is  hardly  any  Red 
Indian  blood  in  the  European  population.  These  physical 
resemblances  prove  that  the  same  conditions  produce  the  same 
effects  on  personi  of  totally  different  races. 


282          MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

have  supposed  that  the  exigencies  of  his  masters, 
the  American  capitalists,  had  more  to  do  with  it, 
but  if  Mr.  Wilson  was  really  influenced  by  the  con- 
sideration mentioned,  he  is  even  less  clear-sighted 
than  I  take  him  to  be.  The  one  chance  of  avert- 
ing a  revolution  was  to  show  that  bourgeois  society 
was  not  completely  bankrupt,  that  it  was  capable 
of  rising  to  the  occasion.  Had  Mr.  Wilson  retired 
from  the  Peace  Conference  or,  if  necessary,  resigned 
the  Presidency  of  the  United  States,  rather  than 
compromise  on  matters  of  principle,  he  would  not 
only  have  made  a  name  in  history,  but  would  also 
have  acquired  immence  influence  on  the  masses  of 
the  people  in  France  and  elsewhere  and  they  vould 
have  been  willing  to  listen  to  him.  As  it  is,  his 
failure  appears  to  the  French  proletariat  as  the 
final  bankruptcy  of  bourgeois  society.  The  capi- 
talist Governments  have  shown  that  they  are  in- 
capable of  learning  by  experience,  that  they  cannot 
free  themselves  from  the  old  conceptions  ot  abso- 
lute national  sovereignty,  strategic  frontiers  and 
territorial  safeguards,  that  they  have  no  vision  of 
a  new  order,  no  idea  of  a  better  organisation  of 
the  world.  They  have  made  a  peace  treat/  on  the 
old  lines,  but,  as  its  authors  lacked  the  knowledge 
and  skill  of  the  great  diplomatists  of  the  past  and 
were  hampered  by  the  necessity  of  paying  hypo- 
critical respect  to  formulas  which  they  had  ac- 
cepted but  in  which  they  never  believed,  it  is  a 
clumsy  compromise  between  contradictory  princi- 
ples. Metternich  and  Talleyrand  would  have  done 
better ;  at  least  they  would  not  have  made  arrange- 
ments so  grotesque  as  those  relating  co  Dantzig 
and  the  Saar  Valley,  of  which  the  former  was  Mr. 
Wilson's  own  conception — the  fact  is  a  measure 
of  his  capacity  as  a  statesman.  Downright  annexa- 
tion would  have  been  less  dangerous  to  the  peace 


SOCIALISM,  SYNDICALISM       283 

of  Europe  than  these  hybrid  solutions.  Mr.  Wil- 
son's League  of  Nations,  for  the  sake  of  which  the 
war  was  prolonged  for  nearly  two  years,  differs 
from  the  Holy  Alliance  of  1815  chiefly  in  the  fact 
that  in  the  present  case  the  small  nations  are 
harnessed  to  the  chariot  wheels  of  the  five  Powers 
banded  together  for  the  hegemony  of  the  civilised 
world.  When  the  representatives  of  the  capitalist 
Governments  signed  the  peace  treaty  with  Ger- 
many at  Versailles  on  June  28  1919,  they  signed 
the  death-warrant  of  capitalist  society ;  and  the  silly 
journalists  that  clamoured  for  what  is  called  in 
America  a  "  treat  ?em  rough  "  policy,  were  digging 
its  grave.  Blinded  by  hate,  intoxicated  by  vic- 
tory, learning  nothing  and  forgetting  nothing,  des- 
titute of  a  sense  of  realities,  the  bourgeoisie  of  the 
Allied  countries  has  shown  the  proletariat  that  it 
is  incapable  of  adapting  itself  to  new  conditions 
or  of  even  grasping  the  data  of  the  problems  that 
lie  before  the  world.  Nay,  it  has  gone  back  instead 
of  forward  :  there  was  more  internationalism  and 
genuine  liberalism  in  the  Whig  aristocracy  of  the 
early  nineteenth  century;  Charles  James  Fox 
would  have  made  a  better  peace  than  did  Messrs. 
Wilson,  George  and  Clemenceau.  The  reason  why 
revolution  is  inevitable  is  that  bourgeois  society  is 
degenerate  and  moribund.  It  refused  to  be  saved 
by  Mr.  Wilson  as  it  had  refused  to  be  saved  by 
Lord  Lansdowne;  it  must  pay  the  penalty  of  its 
obstinate  stupidity. 

Although  revolution  must  necessarily  be  the  work 
of  a  minority,  it  is  improbable  that  it  will  originate 
in  the  conscious  determination  of  the  Socialist 
Party  or  of  any  other  group  or  individual.  The 
forces  which  are  leading  to  it  are  beyond  the  con- 
trol of  individuals.  What  I  anticipate  in  France 
is  the  sudden  expansion  into  a  general  revolu- 


284         MY   SECOND  COUNTRY 

tionary  movement  of  some  ordinary  strike  due  to  a 
trade  dispute.  Only  the  resistance  of  the  General 
Confederation  of  Labour  to  the  pressure  of  cer- 
tain Trade  Unions  and  of  the  rank  and  file  of  the 
Trade  Unionists  prevented  such  a  development  of 
the  strikes  in  France  in  June  1919.  The  national 
executive  of  the  Metal-workers'  Federation  actually 
demanded  a  general  strike,  and  the  Metal-workers' 
Federation  is  the  largest  and  most  important  Trade 
Union  organisation  in  France.  The  General  Con- 
federation of  Labour  was  vehemently  attacked  by 
the  rank  and  file  for  its  moderation.  M.  Dumoulin, 
a  member  of  the  executive  of  the  Confederation, 
dealt  frankly  with  the  matter  in  L'HumanitS  of 
June  21,  1919.  The  C.G.T.  could  not,  he  said, 
allow  individual  Unions,  however  powerful,  to  pre- 
cipitate a  general  strike  or  allow  itself  to  be  blinded 
by  spontaneous  impatience  and  irritation ;  it  must 
await  the  right  moment  for  action.  I  do  not  doubt 
that  the  C.G.T.  was  right ;  men  with  such  a  respon- 
sibility on  their  shoulders  as  have  the  leaders  of 
French  Trade  Unionism  may  well  hesitate  to  risk  a 
movement  of  such  a  kind  in  any  conditions  that  do 
not  make  its  success  almost  certain.  But  the 
danger  is  that  the  spontaneous  impatience  and  irri- 
tation of  the  rank  and  file  may  overwhelm  the 
leaders  and  precipitate  the  movement,  whether 
they  like  it  or  not.  That  has  already  occurred  in 
the  case  of  individual  strikes ;  nearly  all  the  recent 
strikes  both  in  France  and  England  have  been 
spontaneous  movements  on  the  part  of  the  rank 
and  file,  and  some  of  them  have  taken  the  Trade 
Union  officials  by  surprise.  In  France,  as  in  Eng- 
land, the  real  leaders  of  the  Trade  Union  move- 
ment are  no  longer  the  Trade  Union  officials,  but 
the  shop  stewards  (d£Ugu6s  de  Patelier),  and  the 
shop  stewards  in  France,  as  in  England,  are  mostly 


SOCIALISM,  SYNDICALISM      285 

revolutionary  in  feeling.  In  the  spring  of  1918  I 
was  talking  in  Paris  about  the  feeling  of  the  prole- 
tariat to  a  distinguished  man,  not  a  Socialist,  still 
less  a  revolutionary,  who  had  been  director  of  a 
State  armament  factory  during  the  greater  part  of 
the  war.  He  said  that  the  workmen  were  even 
then  in  a  state  bordering  on  exasperation  and  that 
there  was  only  one  Trade  Union  leader  in  whom 
they  still  had  confidence,  because  he  had  always 
been  opposed  to  the  war;  but,  he  added,  "  il  sera 
deborde "  (he  will  be  overwhelmed).  In  May 
1918  his  prophecy  was  already  fulfilled  to  some 
extent  by  the  general  strike  of  the  French  munition 
workers,  in  opposition  to  the  wishes  of  their  Trade 
Union  officials,  at  one  of  the  most  critical  moments 
of  the  war;  it  was  primarily  a  political  strike — a 
strike  in  favour  of  ending  the  war.  Now  the 
exasperation  of  the  rank  and  file  is  such  that  it 
is  becoming  increasingly  difficult  for  the  leaders  to 
hold  them  back  and  at  any  moment  all  the  Trade 
Union  officials  may  be  overwhelmed.  There  are 
too  many  causes  of  unrest  and  discontent :  the 
failure  of  the  hope  of  a  lasting  peace  settlement; 
the  continuance  of  conscription  and  armaments; 
the  Allied  intervention  in  Russia  and  Hungary; 
above  all,  the  appalling  cost  of  living.  We  have 
seen  in  a  previous  chapter  that  the  cost  of  living  is 
to  a  great  extent  the  result  of  the  deliberate  policy 
of  the  Government  of  M.  Clemenceau,  which  sacri- 
ficed the  consumer  to  the  interests  of  a  few  pro- 
fiteers. So  did  it  sacrifice  the  proletariat  to  the 
selfishness  of  the  bourgeoisie,  which  refused  to  sub- 
mit to  an  adequate  income  tax.  The  French  prole- 
tariat and  the  French  peasantry  will  not  consent  to 
be  reduced  to  misery  for  generations  in  order  to  pay 
the  interest  on  a  national  debt  of  nearly  seven 
thousand  million  pounds.  Sooner  or  later  they  will 


286         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

decide  to  repudiate  that  debt,  and  that  will  be  one 
of  the  causes  of  a  revolution.  France,  in  fact,  is 
insolvent,  and  the  only  way  out  of  insolvency  is 
bankruptcy.  There  is  intense  bitterness  at  the 
way  in  which  the  French  people  has  been  deceived 
by  successive  Governments  during  the  war,  which 
have  declared  one  after  the  other  that  Germany 
would  pay  all  the  cost  of  the  war.  M.  Klotz 
actually  said  that  so  late  as  the  spring  of  1919, 
when  the  peace  negotiations  were  in  progress. 
Nobody  believed  it  then,  but  during  the  war  the 
one  answer  of  the  French  bourgeois  to  anybody  that 
suggested  the  desirability  of  counting  the  cost  was  : 
"  The  Germans  will  pay/'  The  masses  of  the 
people,  who  knew  nothing  about  financial  matters, 
were  equally  deceived,  with  more  excuse,  and  the 
illusion  was  one  of  the  chief  factors  in  inducing 
them  to  allow  the  war  to  go  on  to  the  bitter  end. 
Now  they  see  that  Germany  cannot  pay  more  than 
a  small  fraction  of  the  cost  of  the  war  and  that  the 
victory,  which  has  cost  so  dear  in  blood  and  trea- 
sure, is  indeed,  as  M.  Clemenceau  has  said,  a 
Pyrrhic  victory  for  France.  One  of  the  most 
striking  symptoms  of  a  new  spirit  is  the  tendency, 
already  mentioned,  of  the  salaried  bourgeoisie  to 
combine  with  the  proletariat.  Paris  saw  in  1919 
the  novel  spectacle  of  25,000  bank  clerks  on  strike 
marching  down  the  Grand  Boulevard.  A  theatrical 
Trade  Union  has  been  formed  which  includes  all 
that  get  their  living  by  the  theatres  and  music- 
halls,  from  the  scene-shifter  to  the  leading  lady. 
The  book  illustrators  and  caricaturists  have  also 
combined  and,  like  the  bank  clerks  and  the  theatri- 
cal Trade  Unionists,  affiliated  their  Union  to  the 
General  Confederation  of  Labour;  the  Unions  of 
the  printing  trade  have  promised  them  their  special 
support.  The  Association  of  Government  Officials 


SOCIALISM,  SYNDICALISM      287 

has  demanded  the  right,  now  denied  to  it  by  law, 
to  convert  itself  into  a  Trade  Union  affiliated  to 
the  General  Confederation  of  Labour,  thus  follow- 
ing the  example  of  the  elementary  school  teachers 
and  of  the  employees  of  the  Postal,  Telegraphic 
and  Telephone  services.  This  awakening  of  those 
classes  of  the  bourgeoisie  that  live  wholly  or  chiefly 
by  their  own  earnings  to  the  fact  that  their  in- 
terests are  the  same  as  those  of  the  proletariat  is  of 
great  significance  and  cannot  fail  to  have  impor- 
tant results. 

These  are  the  factors  that  make  for  revolution 
in  France.  It  is  impossible  not  to  feel  grave 
anxiety  about  the  situation.  The  C.G.T.  is  right 
to  be  prudent,  but  it  must  not  forget  that  courage 
is  as  necessary  as  prudence,  and  that,  although  it 
is  wise  to  wait  for  the  right  moment,  it  is  neces- 
sary to  recognise  it  when  it  has  arrived.  Should 
there  be  a  spontaneous  upheaval,  it  might,  unless 
there  were  men  ready  to  take  control  of  the  move- 
ment and  organise  the  revolution,  end  in  nothing 
but  futile  violence  and  ruthless  repression.  A  re- 
volution would  be  useless  unless  there  were  men 
commanding  the  general  confidence  of  the  prole- 
tariat and  capable  of  organising  the  new  social 
conditions.  The  crisis  may  produce  the  men,  but 
at  present  one  would  find  it  difficult  to  name  them. 
There  is  nobody  in  France  who  commands  univer- 
sal confidence  as  Jaures  did.  There  has  not  been  a 
moment  during  the  last  five  years  at  which  his  loss 
has  not  been  felt :  never  was}  it  more  sensible 
than  now.  No  event  has  been  more  disastrous  to 
France  in  the  last  half-century  than  the  murder 
of  her  greatest  statesman  by  a  miserable  fanatic, 
egged  on  by  the  reactionaries  and  militarists.  The 
acquittal  of  the  murderer,  Villain,  on  the  ground 
of  his  patriotic  motives  by  a  bourgeois  jury  was, 


288         MY  SECOND   COUNTRY 

after  all,  consistent  enough.  Both  Villain  and  the 
jury  are  typical  representatives  of  the  devotees 
of  that  worst  of  all  religions,  whose  cardinal  vir- 
tues are  vanity  and  hate,  which  is  red  in  tooth  and 
claw  with  the  blood  of  the  youth  of  Europe.  But 
what  a  manifestation  of  stupidity  was  that  ver- 
dict of  twelve  representative  bourgeois  !  What  a 
valuable  exposure  of  the  dupery  of  the  "  Sacred 
Union  "  !  The  densest  individual  in  the  French 
proletariat  can  no  longer  doubt  who  are  his  real 
enemies. 

Irreparable  as  was  the  loss  of  Jaures,  nevertheless 
there  are  many  men  of  courage  and  capacity  among 
the  leaders  of  French  Socialism  and  Trade  Unionism 
and  in  the  rank  and  file ;  neither  ability  nor  char- 
acter is  lacking.  There  is,  then,  ground  for  hope 
that,  when  the  moment  conies,  the  men  also  will  be 
forthcoming.  Perhaps  some  of  them  will  be  men 
at  present  almost  unknown. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

BACK   TO   VOLTAIRE 

"  The  France  of  Voltaire  and  Montesquieu — that  is  the  great, 
the  true  France." — ANATOLE  FRANCE. 

THAT  Anatole  France  was  right  in  saying  that 
the  true  France  is  the  France  of  Voltaire  is  my  firm 
conviction.  Voltaire  was  the  typical  Frenchman 
of  the  best  kind  with  the  typical  French  qualities 
and  weaknesses ;  only  in  his  case  the  qualities  were 
developed  to  so  rare  a  degree  that  they  obscured  the 
weaknesses.  Rationalist,  sceptical,  even  cynical — 
if  it  be  cynical  to  see  things  as  they  are — he  was 
at  the  same  time  intensely  affectionate  and  his 
benevolence  was  almost  unlimited.  He  had  a  pas- 
sion for  justice  and  spent  half  his  life,  at  con- 
stant risk  to  himself,  in  defending  the  victims  of 
injustice;  only  his  marvellous  ingenuity  enabled 
him  to  escape  the  risks  that  he  ran.  His  immense 
tolerance  was  perhaps  the  result  of  his  cynicism,  for 
after  all  what  is  called  a  cynical  view  of  human 
nature  leads  to  a  tolerant  and  benevolent  attitude. 
It  is  those  who  expect  too  much  of  human  nature 
that  are  severe  on  themselves  and  their  fellow- 
creatures.  Beware  of  a  man  who  is  hard  on  him- 
self, says  Anatole  France,  he  may  hit  you  by  mis- 
take. Voltaire's  tolerance  finds  its  highest  expres- 
sion in  the  famous  sentence  of  his  letter  to  Hel- 

289 


290         MY  SECOND   COUNTRY 

vetius :  "  I  wholly  disapprove  of  what  you  say 
and  will  defend  to  the  death  your  right  to  say  it." 
His  "Treatise  on  Religious  Toleration  "  is  a  noble 
and  moving  appeal. 

And  to  what  a  remarkable  degree  Voltaire 
possessed  that  typical  French  quality  of  sound 
good  sense !  He  was  essentially  a  realist — a 
practical  man,  not  in  the  least  an  ideologist. 
He  never  pontificated  or  posed  as  a  High 
Priest  of  Humanity,  but  how  completely  human 
he  was !  French,  too,  were  his  mocking  ir- 
reverence, his  refusal  to  allow  that  anything  is 
sacrosanct ;  the  shafts  of  his  ridicule  and  his  biting 
wit  pierced  all  the  traditions  and  the  conventions. 
Hypocrisy  has  had  no  more  deadly  foe.  Irreli- 
gious by  nature  because  so  profound  a  believer  in 
reason,  he  was  perhaps  made  anti-religious  only 
or  chiefly  by  the  hateful  intolerance  of  the  Church, 
of  which  the  murder  of  the  Chevalier  de  la  Barre 
was  a  typical  example.  But  Voltaire  also  saw, 
just  because  he  had  so  clear  a  vision,  that  there 
can  be  no  reconciliation  between  reason  and  faith 
and  that  the  progress  of  humanity  depends  on  the 
triumph  of  reason.  Perhaps  one  of  the  most  con- 
vincing proofs  of  his  greatness  is  the  fact  that,  in 
an  age  when  war  was  looked  upon  as  a  matter  of 
course  and  blessed  (as  it  still  is)  by  the  official 
representatives  of  Christianity,1  he  alone  exposed 
with  scathing  irony  its  brutality  and  stupidity, 
the  hypocrisy  of  the  pretexts  on  which  it  is  waged. 
"  Candide  "  remains  the  most  damning  indictment 
of  war  ever  written.  In  many  respects  Voltaire 
was  a  prophet;  although  he  was  no  revolutionary, 
his  was  one  of  the  principal  influences  that  led  to 
the  Revolution,  for  his  exposure  of  the  cruelty  of 

1  There  are  exceptions,  of  course,  among  whom  it  is  only 
just  to  mention  the  most  important — the  present  Pope. 


BACK  TO  VOLTAIRE  291 

the  ancien  rigime  led  to  its  destruction  and  his 
ruthless  criticism  of  existing  beliefs  and  traditions 
undermined  them.  All  the  authors  of  the  Revolu- 
tion were  inspired  by  Voltaire  with  the  passion  for 
reason,  justice,  liberty,  and  toleration ;  Jacobinism, 
as  has  been  said,  was  the  child"  of  Jean- Jacques 
Rousseau,  in  so  far  as  it  was  not  the  inevitable  re- 
sult of  circumstances. 

The  clear  intellect  of  Voltaire  found  expression 
in  his  limpid  prose,  French  prose  in  its  purest  form. 
Few  writers  attain  that  simplicity  which  he 
achieved,  a  simplicity  which  is  a  difficult  art  to 
acquire;  perhaps  in  the  nineteenth  century  only 
Anatole  France  has  achieved  it,  for  the  prose  of 
Renan,  beautiful  as  it  is,  is  of  a  more  florid  type. 
Voltaire  would  not  have  been  a  typical  Frenchman 
if  his  works  had  been  free  from  "  gauloiserie," 
which  is  a  characteristic  of  nearly  all  that  is 
greatest  in  French  literature,  from  the  mediaeval 
tales  and  Rabelais  to  Anatole  France.  Indeed,  one 
of  the  greatest  liturgical  scholars  of  our  time  once 
told  me  that  there  were  distinct  traces  of  "  gauloi- 
serie "  in  the  French  liturgies  of  the  early  middle 
ages.  To  be  sure,  it  existed  in  English  literature  as 
well  until  Victorian  squeamishness  expelled  it;  the 
bawdy  has  had  an  irresistible  attraction  for 
humanity  in  every  age  and  in  every  country. 
The  more  it  is  repressed  the  more  attractive  it 
becomes — that  is  why  the  English  like  nothing  bet- 
ter than  being  shocked.  Squeamishness  has  its 
price  :  it  has,  for  instance,  ruined  caricature  in  the 
country  of  Hogarth,  Gillray,  and  Rowlandson,  for 
the  essence  of  caricature  is  brutal  frankness. 
Frankness  is  a  French  quality  and  Voltaire  pos- 
sessed it  to  the  full.  We  may  be  proud  of  the 
fact  that  Voltaire  loved  England  and  was  indeed 
greatly  influenced  by  English  literature,  which  he 

u  2 


292         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

knew  thoroughly.  He  lived  in  England  for  nearly 
three  years  and  spoke  and  wrote  our  language 
fluently.  Newton  was  one  of  his  heroes  and  he 
had  an  even  exaggerated  admiration  for  John 
Locke.  "  I  have  been  your  apostle  and  your 
martyr,"  he  wrote  to  Horace  Walpole;  "it  is  not 
fair  that  the  English  should  complain  of  me."1 
Walpole  had  criticised  Voltaire  for  having  ventured 
to  suggest  that  Shakespeare,  for  whom  he  had  an 
intense  admiration,  was  not  without  faults.  The 
"  Letters  Concerning  the  English  Nation,"  which 
Voltaire  wrote  in  English  and  published  in  London 
in  1733,  show  how  great  was  his  affection  for  the 
country  and  the  people. 

Voltaire  was  not,  however,  typical  of  all  French- 
men; he  may  represent — I  believe  that  he  does 
represent — the  "  great,  the  true  France,"  but  there 
is  another.  Pascal  is  also  a  typical  French  intellect 
of  another  kind,  typical  but  at  the  same  time 
exceptional,  for  Pascal,  like  Voltaire,  was  a  genius. 
His  anticipation  of  the  theory  of  evolution — "  after 
all,  nature  was  perhaps  only  a  first  habit" — was 
as  remarkable  as  his  anticipation  of  Pragmatist 
philosophy,  for  Pascal  came  very  near  to  Prag- 
matism. His  apologetic  really  amounted  to  the 
argument  that,  since  we  do  not  know  whether 
there  is  a  God  or  not,  it  is  safer  to  assume  that 
there  is  one,  for,  if  we  be  mistaken,  it  will  make 
no  difference,  whereas,  if  there  be  a  God,  we  shall 
be  on  the  risrht  side;  on  the  other  hand,  if  we 
have  denied  the  existence  of  God  and  there  should 
happen  to  be  one,  we  shall  have  a  very  uncom- 
fortable time.  It  is  not  heroic,  but  it  is  eminently 
practical  and  is  a  manifestation  in  its  way  of 
French  good  sense.  Pascal,  like  Voltaire,  was  a 

1  "  Voltaire  in  His  Letters,"  translated  with  a  Preface  and 
Forewords  by  S.  G.  Tallentyre  (John  Murray),  p.  217. 


BACK   TO   VOLTAIRE  293 

master  of  irony  and  the  Jesuits  have  never  really 
recovered  from  the  terrible  exposure  of  the 
"  Provincial  Letters,"  but  I  confess  that  it  always 
seems  to  me  that  there  was  a  good  deal  of  the 
Jesuitical  in  Pascal  himself.  And  he  sometimes 
gives  the  same  impression  as  Newman — that  the 
person  whom  he  was  principally  trying  to  convince 
of  the  truth  of  Christianity  was  himself .  Chateau- 
briand and  Joseph  de  Maistre  were  other  types  of 
the  religious  Frenchman.  Chateaubriand  was  a 
brilliant  writer  and  an  unscrupulous  humbug,  who 
never  really  believed  in  anything  but  himself.  His 
vanity  and  disloyalty  were  shown  by  his  conduct 
in  1824  towards  Villele,  of  whose  Cabinet  he  was 
a  member,  and  by  the  way  in  which,  three  years 
later,  he  coquetted,  for  personal  reasons  and  out 
of  hatred  for  Villele,  with  Bonapartists  and  Re- 

Eublicans  and  thus  helped  to  bring  about  the  down- 
all  of  Charles  X.  He  was,  in  fact,  a  great  man 
of  letters  and  an  intriguing  politician.  Joseph  de 
Maistre,  on  the  contrary,  was  a  perfectly  sincere 
reactionary  and  fanatic,  who  would  gladly  have 
burned  all  the  enemies  of  the  Church  as  well  as  all 
Republicans  and  Democrats;  he  was  a  man  of 
remarkable  gifts,  probably  the  ablest  and  most 
powerful  defender  of  Catholicism  and  reaction  in 
France  in  the  nineteenth  century.  De  Maistre  was 
the  typical  French  Ultramontane  and  represented 
the  forces  that  were  dominant  in  the  French  Church 
throughout  the  nineteenth  century  and  are  now 
more  dominant  in  it  than  ever.  For  since  the 
separation  of  Church  and  State  the  French  Church 
has  been  purged  of  all  its  elements  with  liberal  or 
democratic  tendencies. 

Lamennais  and  Montalembert  were  the  pro- 
tagonists of  what  was  called  liberal  Catholicism 
in  the  thirties  and  forties  of  the  nineteenth 


294          MY  SECOND   COUNTRY 

century.  Montalembert  had  sincere  liberal  in- 
clinations, and  he  had  the  sense  to  recognise 
the  disastrous  consequences  that  the  policy  of 
the  Vatican  and  the  Ultramontanes  would  have  in 
France;  he  died  a  bitterly  disappointed  man  with 
dismal  forebodings  about  the  future  of  the  French 
Church,  which  have  since  been  fully  justified.  But 
Montalembert  supported  a  "  freedom  of  educa- 
tion "  which  consisted  in  exempting  priests  and 
male  and  female  members  of  religious  Orders  from 
all  the  qualifications  required  from  lay  teachers  in 
schools,  and,  with  Falloux  and  Thiers,  he  initiated 
in  1848,  after  the  establishment  of  the  Second 
Republic,  reactionary  measures  quite  incompatible 
with  liberalism  or  democracy.  His  liberalism, 
like  that  of  all  liberal  Catholics,  had  considerable 
restrictions.  Lamennais  was  an  emotional  person 
with  many  attractive  qualities,  who  began  by  being 
an  ardent  and  intolerant  theocrat ;  the  failure  of 
his  absurd  dream  of  reconciling  the  Papacy  and 
democracy  and  his  condemnation  by  the  Pope 
drove  him  out  of  the  Church,  and  he  became  a 
democrat  and  a  republican.  His  was  an  essen- 
tially religious  character,  more  so,  in  fact,  than 
that  of  Joseph  de  Maistre,  who,  like  the  majority 
of  Ultramontanes,  was  really  concerned  chiefly 
with  the  Church  as  a  political  institution.  Lamen- 
nais regarded  the  Church  as  a  great  moral  and  reli- 
gious force  and  was  astonished  to  find  that  the 
Pope  did  not  agree  with  him ;  the  astonishment 
betrayed  a  certain  naiveU  in  his  character. 
Another  leading  liberal  Catholic  was  Lacordaire, 
who  is  alleged  to  have  said  on  his  death-bed  :  "  I 
die  a  penitent  Catholic  and  an  impenitent  liberal." 
Lacordaire,  like  Montalembert,  abandoned  what 
they  called  "the  fatal  alliance  between  the  Throne 
and  the  Altar,"  when  he  saw  that  it  was  ruining 


BACK  TO  VOLTAIRE  295 

the  Church.  In  a  famous  sermon  preached  at 
Notre  Dame  in  1835,  Lacordaire  said :  "I  have 
the  greatest  possible  respect  for  the  old  Royalist 
Party,  the  respect  that  one  feels  for  a  veteran 
covered  with  glory.  But  I  cannot  rely  upon  a 
veteran  whose  wooden  leg  prevents  him  from  scal- 
ing the  heights  up  which  the  new  generation  is 
pressing."  He  was  promptly  suspended  by  the 
Archbishop  of  Paris.  The  liberal  Catholic  move- 
ment was  condemned  by  Rome,  but  in  any  case 
it  would  probably  have  failed  to  make  much  im- 
pression on  the  French  people.  It  was  under  the 
suspicion  of  being  concerned  principally  with  the 
interests  of  the  Church,  and  the  suspicion  had 
some  justification.  Montalembert  and  Lacordaire 
aimed  at  founding  a  Catholic  Party  in  politics, 
which  should  be  liberal  and  democratic — up  to  a 
certain  point — but  which  would  inevitably  be 
obliged  to  put  the  interests  of  the  Church  before 
everything.  All  similar  movements  in  French 
Catholicism  since  that  time  have  had  the  same 
fate;  they  have  all  been  suspected  by  the  public 
and  condemned  by  the  Pope. 

Lamermais,  Montalembert,  Lacordaire  are 
memories  of  the  past ;  Joseph  de  Maistre  and 
Chateaubriand  still  live,  for  their  spirit  is  that  of 
the  majority  of  French  Catholics.  Nor  is  the  in- 
fluence of  Pascal  entirely  extinct — I  do  not  mean 
his  influence  as  a  man  of  letters,  which  will  never 
die,  but  his  influence  on  French  Catholicism.  To 
this  day  one  can  detect  a  strain  of  Jansenism  in 
really  religious  French  Catholics;  at  least  there  is 
a  strain  of  Puritanism.  The  religious  history  of 
France  has  been  a  strange  one.  France  was  at  one 
time  within  an  ace  of  becoming  a  Protestant  coun- 
try. The  Revocation  of  the  Edict  of  Nantes  crushed 
the  Protestants  or  sent  them  into  exile — to  the 


296         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

great  economic  and  intellectual  loss  of  the  coun- 
try— but  right  up  to  the  Revolution  a  large  num- 
ber of  families  of  the  noblesse  were  still  Protestant. 
Most  of  them,  however,  rallied  to  the  Catholic 
Church  when,  at  the  Revolution,  its  cause  became 
identified  with  that  of  the  Monarchy  and  the 
noblesse.  French  Protestantism  was  of  the  most 
severe  type,  for  it  was  Calvinist.  It  is  not  then 
surprising  that  there  is  Puritanism  in  France. 
Moreover,  Puritanism  is  not  at  all  exclusively 
Protestant;  it  has  always  existed  in  Christianity. 
St.  Paul  was  something  of  a  Puritan,  and  St. 
Augustine,  the  spiritual  ancestor  of  Calvin,  was 
one  of  the  most  rigid  Puritans  that  ever  lived.  At 
no  time  in  its  history  has  the  Catholic  Church  been 
free  from  Puritanism.  I  knew  a  Frenchwoman 
who  would  not  take  her  daughters  to  call  at  a 
house  where  there  was  a  reproduction  of  the  Venus 
of  M.ilo  in  the  drawing-room ;  she  was  quite  in  the 
Catholic  tradition,  for  the  Church  forbade  the  repre- 
sentation of  the  nude  in  art  until  the  Renaissance. 
That  is  the  spirit  of  Puritanism,  which  regards 
natural  instincts  as  immoral  and  hates  the  human 
body  as  a  vehicle  of  sin.  The  lives  of  the  saints 
are  full  of  it.  St.  Aloysius  Gonzaga,  the  pattern  of 
youth  in  Jesuit  schools,  never  allowed  himself  to 
see  his  own  body  naked — he  contrived  somehow  to 
put  on  his  night-shirt  in  bed  before  removing  his 
under-clothes.  The  same  gentleman  was  so  pure 
that  he  would  not  look  his  own  mother  in  the  face 
for  fear  he  should  be  tempted  to  sin.  In  many 
French  convent  schools  the  pupils  are  forbidden 
ever  to  be  naked  even  for  the  purpose  of  washing 
and,  if  they  take  a  bath,  are  obliged  to  wear  a 
garment  covering  them  from  head  to  foot;  a  nun 
is  present  to  see  that  they  do  not  lift  it  up.  The 
discouragement  of  cleanliness  is  another  form  of 


BACK  TO  VOLTAIRE  297 

contempt  for  the  human  body.  A  friend  of  mine 
was  in  his  youth  at  a  French  Catholic  school  where 
the  boys  were  allowed  to  wash  their  feet  only 
once  a  month — they  never  had  a  bath.  When  a 
deputation  waited  on  the  Superior  with  the  plea  for 
more  frequent  foot-baths,  he  replied  that  he  would 
favourably  consider  the  matter,  but  he  himself  saw 
no  necessity  for  a  change,  since  he  had  not  taken 
a  foot-bath  for  twenty  years.  He  was  perhaps  a 
disciple  of  St.  Benedict  Joseph  Labre,  the 
patron  saint  of  filth  and  fleas.  Catholic  Puri- 
tanism is  not  perhaps  exactly  of  the  same  kind 
as  Protestant,  but  it  is  sometimes  even  worse. 
The  immense  success  of  Jansenism  in  France 
showed  that  the  really  religious  people  among 
the  French  have  a  tendency  to  Puritanism, 
although  Puritanism  was  far  from  being  the  whole 
of  Jansenism. 

The  majority  of  French  Catholics,  however,  are 
not  religious  in  spirit  any  more  than  other  French- 
men. The  non-religious  character  of  the  French  is 
perhaps  one  reason  why  Catholicism — and  Ultra- 
montane Catholicism — has  ultimately  triumphed 
over  other  forms  of  religion  and  all  attempts  to  re- 
place it  have  failed.  "There  is  not  enough  reli- 
gion in  France  to  make  two,"  Talleyrand  is  said  to 
have  remarked;  the  late  Archbishop  of  Albi 
quoted  the  remark  to  Pius  X,  when  the  latter 
asked  him  whether  there  was  any  danger  of  a 
schism  resulting  from  the  separation  of  Church  and 
State.  Catholicism  is  religion  in  its  simplest  form 
—the  propitiation  of  a  deity  by  the  performance 
of  certain  rites — and,  in  spite  of  Jansenism  and 
numerous  other  attempts  to  alter  its  character,  that 
form  has  persisted.  The  obligation  of  going  to 
Mass  once  a  week  and  to  confession  and  communion 
once  a  year  does  not  unduly  tax  the  least  religious 


298         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

of  mortals.  A  low  Mass  lasts  from  twenty  to 
twenty-five  minutes  and,  whereas  it  was  once  held 
that  in  order  to  hear  Mass  one  must  arrive  before 
the  Gospel,  it  is  now  considered  sufficient  to  arrive 
before  the  Canon  or  even  before  the  consecration. 
The  Franciscans  in  the  Middle  Ages  started  the 
convenient  theory  that  one  heard  Mass  in  a  Fran- 
ciscan church,  if  one  arrived  before  the  "  Ite, 
missa  est,"  with  which  it  concludes,  and  thereby 
filled  their  churches  to  the  detriment  of  the  parish 
churches  and  the  indignation  of  the  secular  clergy. 
This  theory  must  still  have  partisans  in  France,  for 
on  any  Sunday  morning  one  may  see  large  num- 
bers of  men  arriving  at  the  Madeleine  just  before 
the  end  of  the  eleven  o'clock  High  Mass.  They 
wait  at  the  bottom  of  the  church  to  watch  the 
women  go  out,  and  very  agreeable  acquaintances,  I 
am  told,  have  often  been  made  in  this  way.  The 
English  Catholic  is  a  very  different  person  from  the 
Catholic  of  a  Catholic  country;  he  takes  the  whole 
thing  seriously,  as  Aeneas  Piccolimini  (afterwards 
Pius  II)  said  with  contemptuous  pity  of  the  Irish 
of  his  day.  The  Catholic  of  a  Catholic  country — at 
any  rate  in  France  and  Italy — is  always  exercising 
his  ingenuity  to  sail  as  near  the  wind  as  possible — 
to  get  round  the  laws  of  the  Church  or  to  discover 
the  least  that  he  can  possibly  do  to  comply  with 
them.  He  has  the  valuable  aid  of  the  moral  theolo- 
gians, who  have,  for  instance,  decided  in  France 
that  a  water-fowl  is  fish  and  may,  therefore,  be 
eaten  on  a  day  of  abstinence.  So  the  wealthy 
French  Catholic,  whose  delight  it  is  to  dine  as 
sumptuously  as  he  possibly  can  on  a  Friday  without 
breaking  the  laws  of  the  Church,  eats  wild  duck 
with  a  clear  conscience.  This  spirit  of  frondisme 
is,  as  I  have  remarked  in  a  previous  chapter, 
very  common  among  Frenchmen  in  general — they 


BACK  TO  VOLTAIRE  299 

love  to  evade  rules  and  regulations;  it  is,  of 
course,  a  natural  reaction  from  respect  for 
authority. 

The  Catholic  Church,  however,  is  not  primarily  a 
religious,  But  a  political  organisation,  and  that  is  the 
chief  reason  why  it  retains  a  certain  hold  in  France. 
The  Church  is  the  last  hope  of  the  reactionaries. 
Nobody  can  come  into  contact  with  French  Catho- 
lics without  noticing  how  very  little  interest  most 
of  them  take  in  religious  matters.  The  majority 
of  Catholic  men,  at  any  rate,  rather  accept  the 
dogmas  of  the  Church  than  believe  in  them ;  they 
swallow  them  whole,  so  to  speak,  and  think  no  more 
about  them  for  the  rest  of  their  lives.  That  is  the 
case  with  the  most  intellectual  of  them.  Pasteur,  for 
instance,  was  a  practising  though  never  a  devout 
Catholic,  but  everybody  that  knew  him  agrees  that 
he  never  exercised  his  intellect  on  religion;  he  put 
it  in  a  separate  compartment  of  his  brain  and  left 
it  there  without  ever  attempting  to  make  a  syn- 
thesis between  it  and  his  other  quite  inconsistent 
beliefs.  Possibly  it  was  merelv  the  externals  of 
religion  that  appealed  to  him.  That  is  quite  an  in- 
telligible attitude — indeed,  one  of  mv  friends  is 
always  regretting  that  it  is  not  possible  to  retain 
the  externals  of  Catholic  ceremonial  and  get  rid 
of  everything  else.  Purely  external  conformity 
is  very  common  in  France.  The  so-called 
"  Modernist  "  movement  was  an  attempt  to  revive 
Catholicism  as  a  living  religious  force  and  to  make 
a  synthesis  between  it  and  contemporary  thought. 
The  Modernists  were  of  various  kinds  :  some  were 
interested  in  philosophy,  some  in  biblical  and  his- 
torical criticism,  some  in  political  and  social  ques- 
tions. According  to  their  interest,  they  attempted 
to  reconcile  Catholicism  with  contemporary  philo- 
sophy, with  the  results  of  historical  criticism,  or 


800         MY  SECOND   COUNTRY 

with  democracy.  One  of  the  most  distinguished 
Modernists  was  M.  Alfred  Loisy,  the  eminent  his- 
torical critic,  who  was  finally  excommunicated  and 
is  now  professor  of  the  history  of  religions  at  the 
College  de  France.  The  majority  of  the  Modernists 
were  men  of  strong  religious  feeling,  more  so  than 
most  orthodox  French  Catholics.  Some  of  them 
believed  that  Catholicism  in  its  present  form  could 
not  last,  and  aimed  at  a  means  of  breaking  the 
fall,  so  to  speak,  and  preventing  the  collapse  of 
Catholicism  from  leading  to  general  irreligion.  But 
these  were  not  in  the  majority;  the  prevalent 
tendency  was  to  believe  in  the  possibility  of 
restatement  of  Catholic  dogma  as  would  enable  the 
Church  to  survive.  It  was  the  dream  of  Lamennais 
over  again  in  a  different  form.  The  philosophical 
side  of  Modernism  was  based  to  a  great  extent  on 
Pragmatism  and  on  the  philosophy  of  M.  Bergson ; 
it  was  strongly  anti-intellectualist.  Faith  was  to 
be  saved  by  being  entirely  separated  from  reason 
and  put  on  a  different  plane.  "  Le  coeur  a  ses 
raisons  que  la  raison  ne  connait  pas,"  had  said 
Pascal,  in  this,  as  in  so  many  other  respects,  a  fore- 
runner, and  that  sums  up  the  Modernist  philo- 
sophy. It  was  in  reality  the  old  heresy  of 
"  fideism  "  in  a  new  form.  Some  Modernists  carried 
symbolism  to  extremes ;  they  believed  that  it  would 
be  possible  to  retain  Catholic  dogmas  and  the 
Catholic  rites  while  giving  them  all  a  purely  sym- 
bolical meaning — to  believe,  for  instance,  in  the 
Virerin  Birth  of  Jesus  in  some  symbolical  sense, 
while  admitting  that  it  was  not  an  historical  fact, 
and  to  continue  to  go  to  Mass  without  believing  in 
the  maerical  rite.  Some  few  Modernists  went  so  far 
as  to  hold  that  it  did  not  matter  whether  Jesus  had 
actually  existed  or  not,  since  in  any  case  one  could 
worship  the  symbolical  Christ.  They  were  certainly 


BACK  TO  VOLTAIRE  301 

mistaken :  such  an  attitude  may  be  possible  for  a 
few  highly  intellectual  individuals  with  vivid 
imaginations,  but  it  could  never  be  that  of  a 
popular  religion.  The  French  peasant  would  not 
continue  to  go  to  Mass  if  he  ceased  to  believe  in 
the  magical  power  of  the  priest,  and  would  not  con- 
tinue to  worship  the  Host  unless  he  believed  it  to 
be  God.  He  has,  in  fact,  ceased  to  a  great  extent 
to  go  to  Mass  because  he  has  ceased  to  believe  in 
these  things.  It  would  be  useless  to  explain  to  him 
that  he  ought  to  go  on  worshipping  the  Host  be- 
cause the  fact  that  the  worshippers  concentrate 
their  attention  on  it  and  accept  it  as  the  symbol  of 
God  makes  it  equivalent  to  God  for  them.  I  re- 
member many  attempts  to  induce  M.  Loisy  to 
organise  a  symbolical  cult,  but  with  his  French  good 
sense  he  invariably  refused. 

The  Modernists  were  a  small  band  of  sincere  and 
disinterested  men,  who  were  doomed  to  failure. 
The  Pope  was  right  from  his  point  of  view  to  con- 
demn them,  for,  although  they  would  probably 
have  succeeded  in  prolonging  the  existence  of 
Catholicism  for  a  certain  time  and  would  certainly 
have  preserved  religious  feeling  to  some  extent, 
they  would  inevitably  have  destroyed  the  Papacy. 
Their  ideas  were  incompatible  with  absolute 
authority.  The  Papacy  may,  indeed,  be  destroyed 
in  any  case,  or  at  least  sink  into  complete  insignifi- 
cance, but  it  was  natural  that  it  should  prefer  to 
take  the  risk  of  what  the  future  may  have  in  store 
for  it  rather  than  accept  certain  extinction.  More- 
over, the  condemnation  of  Modernism  is  not  to  be 
regretted.  All  the  attempts,  however  sincere,  to 
adapt  the  Church  to  democracy  or  to  reconcile  it 
with  science  only  serve  to  confuse  people's  minds 
and  to  obscure  the  incompatibility  of  Catholicism 
with  both.  The  condemnation  of  Modernism,  as 


302         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

of  all  previous  movements  of  a  similar  kind,  made 
the  situation  quite  clear.  Now  that  one  recognises 
the  condemnation  as  an  emancipation,  one  can 
hardly  believe  it  possible  that  it  should  have  caused 
such  mental  anguish  at  the  time.  In  France,  at 
any  rate,  it  is  now  clearly  recognised  on  both  sides 
that  no  reconciliation  can  ever  be  possible  between 
the  most  autocratic  political  institution  in  the 
world  and  democracy,  liberalism,  or  Socialism : 
"  ceci  tuera  cela." 

That  recognition  has  been  aided  by  the  complete 
identification  of  French  Catholicism  with  political 
reaction.  Throughout  the  nineteenth  century,  and 
more  than  ever  at  this  moment,  the  reactionary 
party,  the  clerical  party,  the  Royalist  party  have 
been  and  are  different  names  for  the  same  thing. 
The  memory  of  what  the  Catholic  Church  did  when 
it  had  the  power  under  Louis  XVIII  and 
Charles  X,  and  to  a  less  extent  during  the  Second 
Empire,  had  never  died  out ;  always  it  was  the  chief 
bulwark  of  privilege,  of  capitalism,  of  autocracy. 
Leo  XIII  tried  to  induce  French  Catholics  to  rally 
to  the  Republic,  but  he  failed — happily  for  the 
Republic,  for,  had  they  done  so  at  that  time,  they 
would  probably  have  gained  the  mastery  of  the 
country  and  France  would  have  had  a  clerical 
Republic  even  less  democratic  than  the  bourgeois 
Republic  and  completely  under  the  control  of  the 
Church.  The  identification  of  the  Church  with 
political  reaction  was  the  chief  cause  of  the  revival 
of  Catholicism  among  intellectuals  and  the  upper 
and  middle  bourgeoisie  in  general,  which  began  in 
the  last  decade  of  the  nineteenth  century  and  con- 
tinued until  the  war.  Intellectuals  rallied  to  the 
Church  as  the  representative  of  authority  and  the 
barrier  against  the  rising  tide  of  revolution;  the 
bourgeoisie  in  general  rallied  to  the  moral  police- 


BACK  TO   VOLTAIRE  303 

man  who  would  keep  the  proletariat  in  order  and 
protect  their  own  money-bags.     It  is  certain  that 
only  where  the  Church  is  still  strong  in  France  is 
the  population  docile  and  submissive  and  that  the 
proletariat  and  the  peasantry  have  developed  inde- 
pendence and  self-reliance  as  they  have  become  less 
and  less  religious.    The  secularisation  of  the  schools 
which  emancipated  them  from  the  control  of  the 
Church  was,  as  I  have  already  said,  an  event  of  the 
utmost  importance  in  the  history  of  France,  which 
has    had    far-reaching    consequences.     Without    it 
Socialism  would  never  have  attained  its  present 
position  and  the  proletariat  would  probably  still 
have  been  completely  at  the  mercy  of  the  capita- 
lists.    The  General  Confederation  of  Labour  was 
founded  thirteen  years  after  the  secularisation  of 
the  schools,  and  it  was  only  when  the  generations 
educated  in  the  secular  schools  began  to  grow  up 
that  Socialism  and  Trade  Unionism  became  serious 
factors  in  French  society.     It  was,  then,   a  true 
instinct  that  led  the  conservative  and  reactionary 
bourgeoisie  to  regret  its  anti-clericalism  and  rally 
to  the  Church. 

Brunetiere  was  a  typical  example  of  the  intel- 
lectuals that  returned  to  Catholicism.  His  conver- 
sion was  entirely  due  to  the  conviction  that  the 
Church  was  the  last  hope  of  authority.  I  doubt 
whether  he  ever  had  any  real  faith  in  Catholic  doc- 
trine; his  Catholicism  was  almost  exclusively 
political.  So  lightly  did  the  religious  side  of  it  sit 
upon  him  that  he  never  forgave  Pius  X  for  having 
rejected  his  advice  in  regard  to  the  Separation  Law 
and  having  refused  to  authorise  the  formation  of 
Catholic  associations  under  that  law.  Brunetiere 
died  without  having  received  the  last  sacraments 
because  he  did  not  want  to  receive  them.  He  was 
given  Catholic  burial  on  the  ground  that  his  death 


304       MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

was  sudden;  he  fell  dead,  in  fact,  while  in  the  act 
of  drinking  a  glass  of  wine  at  a  meal.  But  he  had 
been  ill  for  months  and  had  known  that  he  might 
die  at  any  moment  and,  had  he  remained  a  believ- 
ing Catholic,  he  would  certainly  have  received  the 
sacraments  during  that  time.  Some  of  the  political 
Catholics  have  gone  to  extremes.  M.  Maurras,  for 
instance,  calls  himself  an  atheist  Catholic ;  he  wrote 
in  the  Action  Franqaise  a  famous  article  expound- 
ing his  conception  of  "  Catholicism  without 
Christ,"  which  the  Croix,  one  of  the  leading 
Catholic  papers,  declared  to  be  thoroughly  Catho- 
lic in  spirit.  M.  Maurras  objects,  in  par- 
ticular, to  the  ethical  teaching  of  the  Sermon  on 
the  Mount. 

When  the  war  broke  out  practising  Catholics 
over  the  greater  part  of  France  were  chiefly  to  be 
found  in  the  bourgeoisie  and  the  peasantry,  and 
among  them  the  proportion  of  women  was  at  least 
ten  to  one.  The  number  of  men  that  are  Catholics 
in  any  sense — even  a  purely  political  one — can  be 
fairly  accurately  gauged  by  the  result  of  a  general 
election,  for  the  vast  majority  of  Catholics  vote  for 
reactionary  candidates.  There  are  certain  country 
districts  where  most  of  the  peasants  still  go  to  Mass 
but  nevertheless  vote  Republican,  but  they  are  rare 
and  are  counterbalanced  by  the  Freethinkers  in  the 
bourgeoisie  that  vote  reactionary.  The  popular 
view  of  the  matter  was  expressed  in  the  remark  of 
the  wife  of  a  village  mayor  in  the  Sarthe  some  three 
years  ago.  "  Ah,  sir,"  she  said,  "  the  day  of  M. 
Poincare's  election  I  felt  sure  that  no  good  would 
come  of  it :  the  cure*  was  so  pleased."  At  a  general 
election  the  avowed  reactionaries  usually  poll  about 
one-eighth  of  the  total  number  of  votes  cast  and 
that  pretty  well  represents  the  proportion  of  men  in 
France  that  have  Catholic  sympathies ;  the  propor- 


BACK  TO   VOLTAIRE  305 

tion  that  "practise"  is  much  smaller.  Fourteen 
or  fifteen  years  ago  one  of  the  French  Bishops 
estimated  the  number  of  persons,  including 
children,  who  attended  Mass  at  all,  however 
irregularly,  at  about  eight  millions,  or  twenty  per 
cent,  of  the  population.  Since  then  attendance  at 
Mass  has  steadily  diminished,  especially  in  the 
rural  districts.  Visitors  to  Paris  may  easily  be 
misled  in  this  regard  by  the  crowded  congregations 
in  the  fashionable  churches.  But,  on  the  one 
hand,  the  women  and  children  of  the  upper  and 
middle  bourgeoisie  go  to  Mass  as  a  rule,  and  on 
the  other  there  are  comparatively  few  churches  in 
Paris.  When  the  Separation  Law  was  passed,  in 
1905,  the  average  population  of  a  Parisian  parish 
was  over  36,000 ;  it  is  now  rather  smaller,  as  a  few 
new  parishes  have  been  formed.  The  difference 
between  London  and  Paris  in  this  regard  is  very 
great,  especially  when  one  takes  into  account  that 
in  London  the  Anglican  churches  are  not  even  a 
majority  of  the  places  of  worship,  whereas  in  Paris 
there  are  only  a  handful  of  Protestant  temples  and 
Jewish  synagogues  in  addition  to  the  Catholic 
churches. 

In  this,  as  in  other  regards,  circumstances  differ 
in  different  parts  of  France.  The  most  religious 
districts  of  the  country  are  the  north — French 
Flanders — and  the  west— Normandy,  Brittany  and 
the  Vendee.  The  south  as  a  whole  is  irreligious, 
and  so  is  Central  France ;  there  are  whole  depart- 
ments where  the  village  churches  are  nearly  empty, 
and  some  of  them  are  even  closed  altogether  for 
lack  of  a  congregation.  One  of  the  most  striking 
symptoms  of  the  last  few  years  is  that  even  the 
women  in  many  rural  parts  of  France  are  ceasing 
to  go  to  Mass.  The  number  of  people  that  still 
allow  their  children  to  be  baptised  and  to  make 

x 


306         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

their  First  Communion  and  that  go  to  the  Church 
for  marriages  and  funerals  is  much  larger  than  the 
number  of  those  that  actually  practise,  especially 
in  the  rural  districts.  First  Communion  survives 
to  a  considerable  extent  because  it  is  a  social  func- 
tion; for  a  girl  it  is  a  sort  of  "  coming  out."  The 
children  are  feasted,  are  given  lots  of  presents,  go 
about  visiting  their  relatives  for  a  couple  of  days 
in  their  First  Communion  costumes,  and  generally 
have  a  good  time,  so  that  they  are  not  pleased  if 
their  parents'  principles  prevent  them  from  having 
these  enjoyments.  But  I  once  heard  a  priest  re- 
mark that  his  chief  thought  at  a  First  Communion 
was  how  very  few  of  the  young  communicants  he 
would  ever  see  at  the  altar  again.  In  a  very  large 
number  of  cases  the  First  Communion  is  also  the 
last.  In  the  towns  the  masses  of  the  people  are 
abandoning  even  the  practice  of  having  their 
children  baptised,  and  purely  civil  marriages  and 
funerals  are  very  common.  The  civil  marriage  is 
the  only  marriage  recognised  by  French  law,  and 
the  religious  ceremony,  if  any,  must  follow  it. 
Towns  differ,  of  course,  in  this  respect :  for 
instance,  Catholics  are  stronger  in  Lille  and  Lyons, 
particularly  the  former,  than  in  any  other  large 
town,  although  still  a  comparatively  small 
minority.  On  the  other  hand,  I  found  that  in  a 
country  town  of  about  5,000  inhabitants  in  the  de- 
partment of  the  Yonne  forty  per  cent,  of  the 
funerals  were  civil — an  unusually  large  proportion 
in  the  country. 

Many  people  thought  that  the  war  would  lead  to 
a  great  revival  of  religion;  indeed,  writers  like  M. 
Paul  Bourget  and  General  Cherfils  hailed  it  on  that 
account.  M.  Bourget  exclaimed  hi  the  Echo  de 
Paris  early  in  the  war :  "  Ne  trouvez-vous  pas  que 
nous  vivons  plus,  nous  vivons  mieux  ? "  and 


BACK  TO   VOLTAIRE  307 

general  Cherfils,  who  is  an  ardent  Catholic  and 
reactionary,  wrote  of  the  war  as  "this  healthy 
blood-letting  which  will  regenerate  us."  Such 
pronouncements  would  perhaps  have  been  more 
seemly  if  it  had  been  General  Cherfils'  blood  that 
was  being  let  out  and  if  M.  Bourget  had  been  in 
the  trenches,  where  people  were  not  living  either 
tnore  or  better.  But  they  were  both  waging  war 
L  arm-chairs.  At  the  beginning  of  the  war  there 
ere  certainly  more  people  in  the  churches,  or,  at 
ny  rate,  many  people  went  to  church  more  olten. 
"hat  was  to  be  expected;  people  always  invoke 
he  help  of  Heaven  when  everything  else  has  failed, 
ireat  hopes  were  raised  by  the  fact  that  many  of 
the  soldiers  consented  to  wear  blessed  medals,  al- 
though in  most  cases  they  did  so  to  please  a  female 
relative,  or  an  army  chaplain,  or  even  an  officer,  for 
some  of  the  officers  used  their  position  to  promote 
their  own  opinions.  There  was  also  the  feeling 
that  a  medal  could  not  do  one  any  harm  and  might 
by  some  remote  possibility  do  one  good;  there  is 
latent  superstition  in  every  one  of  us  and  the  belief 
in  charms  still  survives.  But  at  the  beginning  of 
the  war  there  was  undoubtedly  a  certain  revival  of 
religious  practice  at  the  same  time  as  an  outbreak 
of  superstition  of  every  kind.  Serious  daily  papers 
published  prophecies,  the  spuriousness  of  which 
has  long  since  been  demonstrated — even ,  our  old 
friend  St.  Malachy  was  resuscitated  by  the  Figaro 
— and  soothsayers,  fortune-tellers,  mediums,  and 
clairvoyants  did  an  enormous  business.  The  re- 
vival, however,  has  not  lasted,  and  I  am  disposed 
to  think  that  the  net  result  of  the  war  has  been  a 
diminution  of  religious  belief  and  practice.  ;  has, 
of  course,  had  different  effects  on  different  people, 
but  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  war  has  brought 
out  in  full  relief  the  extreme  difficulty  of  believing 


308         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

in  a  God  who  is  at  once  omnipotent  and  benevolent. 
The  difficulty  existed  before,  but  the  great  catas- 
trophe has  made  many  people  realise  it  for  the  first 
time,  and  a  large  proportion  of  them  have  come  to 
the  conclusion  that  it  is  insurmountable.  A  con- 
siderable number  of  women  have  abandoned  their 
religion  in  consequence.  As  for  the  soldiers,  any 
tendency  that  there  might  have  been  among  them 
to  take  refuge  in  religion  has  been  checked  by  the 
extreme  indiscretion  of  the  Catholics  themselves, 
especially  some  of  the  ladies  of  the  Croix  Rouge. 
Deep  resentment  has  been  caused  by  the  pressure 
put  upon  wounded  soldiers  in  hospitals  to  receive 
the  sacraments  or  to  go  to  Mass;  the  pressure  has 
often  gone  to  the  length  of  giving  or  withholding 
favours,  according  as  the  men  complied  or  not  with 
the  demands.  Some  officers  have  also  ordered  their 
men  to  hear  Mass  or  used  pressure  upon  them  to 
do  so ;  there  were  cases  where  officers  stood  at  the 
door  of  a  church  to  note  what  men  came  and  put 
a  black  mark  against  the  others.  In  the  French 
army  there  is  no  church  parade,  and  attendance  at 
Mass  is  purely  a  personal  matter ;  men  that  wish  to 
go  are  given  the  opportunity  when  it  is  possible. 
Nothing  could  be  more  calculated  to  put  French 
soldiers  against  religion  than  the  fact  that  their 
officers  attempted  to  impose  it  on  them.  They 
often  went  to  Mass  with  fury  in  their  hearts.  I 
was  told  by  a  Catholic  officer,  who  was  himself 
shocked  at  the  occurrence,  that  nearly  all  the  men 
in  a  certain  regiment  received  communion  one  day 
in  order  to  placate  their  commanding  officer,  al- 
though most  of  them  had  never  communicated,  at 
any  rate  since  they  were  children,  and  some  were 
not  even  baptised.  It  is  usually  safe  in  France  to 
count  on  the  stupidity  of  the  clericals ;  the  Republic 
has  more  often  been  saved  by  it  than  by  the 


BACK   TO   VOLTAIRE  309 

wisdom  of  the  Republicans  and  the  Church  has 
suffered  from  it  again  and  again.  The  first  thing  that 
the  ladies  of  the  Croix  Rouge  did  in  a  certain  place 
on  taking  possession  of  a  public  building  which 
had  been  granted  for  a  hospital  was  to  remove  the 
bust  of  the  Republic,  by  way,  no  doubt,  of  show- 
ing their  enthusiasm  for  the  "  Sacred  Union."  In 
another  case,  when  the  Chant  du  Depart  was  being 
sung,  a  priest  gave  instructions  that  the  first  line 
of  the  chorus,  "  La  Republique  nous  appelle," 
should  be  changed,  in  defiance  of  metre,  to 
"La  patrie  nous  appelle."  These  puerile  mani- 
festations are  typical  of  the  mentality  of  the  French 
clerical. 

On  the  whole,  then,  it  is  probable  that  the 
Church  has  lost  rather  than  gained  by  the  war, 
although  it  is  difficult  to  form  a  definite  opinion. 
The  enormous  sale  of  M.  Henri  Barbusse's  books 
supports  that  view,  for  they  have  been  violently 
denounced  by  all  the  Catholic  and  patriotic  Press, 
and  M.  Barbusse  is  intensely  anti-religious.  My 
belief  is  that  he  represents  a  very  large  proportion 
of  the  young  men  that  have  served  in  the  war. 
Although  books  about  the  war  do  not  as  a  rule 
appeal  to  men  that  have  served  in  it,  "  Le  Feu  " 
was  very  widely  read  at  the  Front,  and  I  have 
never  met  a  soldier  who  did  not  declare  it  to  be  the 
most  true  description  of  the  war.  It  had  the 
immense  advantage  of  being  written  by  a  private 
soldier,  whose  experiences  and  point  of  view  are 
very  different  from  those  of  the  officer.  The  prob- 
able effect  of  the  war  on  thought  in  general  is 
another  question  of  great  interest.  Before  the  war 
there  had  been  a  philosophical  as  well  as  a  religious 
reaction  among  the  bourgeoisie.  The  fashionable 
philosophy  was  that  of  M.  Bergson,  which  in- 
fluenced many  of  the  younger  men  in  the  upper 


310         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

and  middle  bourgeoisie,  and  there  was  a  strong 
reaction  against  the  rationalism  and  intellectualism 
of  the  previous  generation.  I  am  not  competent 
to  express  an  opinion  on  the  merits  of  Bergsonism 
as  a  philosophical  system;  I  can  only  judge  it  by 
its  practical  results,  about  which  there  can  be  no 
doubt — M.  Bergson's  influence  has  made  almost 
entirely  for  political  and  religious  reaction.  This 
result  may  have  been  quite  other  than  M.  Bergson 
desired  or  intended — indeed  he  probably  had  no 
intentions  in  the  matter,  for  a  philosopher  is  not 
concerned  with  such  considerations.  Pragmatism 
has  been  exploited  in  France  to  bolster  up  every 
kind  of  superstition ;  naturally  so,  for  if  anything 
is  to  be  accepted  as  true  that  is  useful  to  humanity 
— that  "  works  " — one  has  only  to  hold  that  a 
superstition  of  any  sort  is  useful  to  humanity  to  be 
justified  in  defending  it.  No  doubt  Pragmatism 
has  been  abused  and  made  to  cover  all  sorts  of 
opinions  that  its  prophets  would  never  have 
allowed  to  be  justified.  For  many  people  it  means 
that  anything  is  true  which  they  find  it  convenient 
or  comfortable  to  believe.  It  has  even  been  used 
to  deny  the  existence  of  positive  knowledge  and  to 
justify  the  theory  that  facts  are  not  a  matter  of 
evidence.  Thus  Catholics  have  maintained  that 
the  question  of  the  existence  of  Jesus  or  of  his 
crucifixion  is  not  a  matter  of  historical  evidence- 
The  late  Lord  Acton  once  said  to  me  that  Roman 
Catholics  were  people  who  believed  facts  to  be 
matters  of  opinion  and  opinions  to  be  facts;  some 
Pragmatists  seem  to  be  of  much  the  same  mind. 
Nothing  could  be  more  convenient  for  the  religions 
than  a  theory  which  dispenses  with  historical  evi- 
dence. I  do  not  say  that  the  Pragmatist  philo- 
sophers would  themselves  defend  such  a  theory, 
but  many  of  those  who  profess  to  be  their  disciples 


BACK  TO  VOLTAIRE  311 

do.  Judged  by  its  practical  results,  Pragmatism  is 
a  dangerous  system ;  it  has  undermined  the  sense 
of  truth  in  many  of  its  adherents  and  led  to  intel- 
lectual insincerity.  In  fact,  it  is  really  a  denial  of 
the  existence  of  truth.  I  remember  a  young  and 
ardent  follower  of  M.  Bergson  calmly  telling  me 
that  of  course  the  present  economic  system  was  not 
to  the  advantage  of  the  proletariat,  but  it  was  to 
the  interest  of  society  that  they  should  be  made  to 
believe  that  it  was.  People  are  already  too  much 
inclined  to  ignore  facts  and  need  no  encouragement 
in  that  regard.  And  who  can  say  what  is  really  to 
the  advantage  of  the  human  race  ?  It  is  a  matter 
of  opinion.  It  will  not  really  be  possible  to  apply 
the  Pragmatist  test  of  truth  until  the  end  of  the 
world,  and  then  there  will  be  nobody  to  apply  it. 
A  witty  profesor  at  Harvard  who  was  at  once  a 
personal  friend  and  a  philosophical  opponent  of 
William  James  once  suggested  to  the  latter  a  new 
form  of  oath  to  be  taken  in  law  courts  by  Prag- 
matist witnesses.  It  ran  thus  :  "  I  swear  to  tell 
what  is  expedient,  the  whole  of  what  is  expedient 
and  nothing  but  what  is  expedient,  so  help  me 
Future  Experience."  That  is  really  the  last  word 
on  the  subject.  Even  if  it  be  true,  for  example, 
that  we  have  to  assume  as  a  working  hypothesis 
that  we  and  other  people  possess  Free  Will,  that 
does  not  prove  that  we  actually  possess  it.  It 
only  proves  that  it  really  does  not  matter  in  the 
least  whether  we  possess  it  or  not,  and  as  we  can 
never  find  out,  it  is  a  waste  of  time  to  bother  our- 
selves about  it.  The  appeal  from  Pragmatism  is 
to  ordinary  good  sense :  there  are  certain 
things  that  are  ascertainable  because  they  are  ques- 
tions of  evidence ;  there  are  certain  things  that  are 
not  ascertainable  and  never  will  be.  When  Dr. 
Johnson  struck  the  earth  with  his  walking  stick  and 


312         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

found  it  solid,  that  did  not  prove,  as  he  seems  to 
have  imagined,  that  matter  really  exists,  but  it  did 
prove  that  it  does  not  matter  whether  it 
exists  or  not.  Nobody  has  yet  bettered  the  de- 
finition of  the  metaphysician  as  "  a  blind  man  in  a 
dark  room  looking  for  a  black  cat  which  isn't 
there."  We  can  all  make  our  own  guesses. 

One  cannot  help  having  a  certain  suspicion  of  a 
philosopher  whose  lectures  are  attended,  as  were 
those  of  M.  Bergson  before  the  war,  chiefly  by 
fashionable  ladies.  The  attraction  was,  I  imagine, 
M.  Bergson 's  theory  of  intuition.  Women  usually 
claim  to  have  more  intuition  than  men — the  claim 
may  be  justified,  for  all  I  know — and  the  theory 
flattered  them.  Besides,  nothing  can  be  more  com- 
forting than  the  notion  that  by  intuition  we  can  get 
further  than  all  the  great  psychologists  and  other 
men  of  science,  for  everybody  has  intuition  to  some 
degree,  and  the  great  advantage  of  the  theory  is  that 
it  seems  to  dispense  people  from  the  necessity  of  any 
kind  of  work  or  study.  Theories  that  save  trouble 
are  always  popular,  and  a  smart  woman  is  natur- 
ally gratified  at  the  idea  that  she  can  know  more 
about  psychology,  for  instance,  than  Dr.  Pierre 
Janet.  That,  I  fancy,  is  one  reason,  at  any  rate, 
why  M.  Bergson 's  lecture-room  at  the  College  de 
France  became  the  best  place  in  Paris  for  observing 
the  latest  fashions  in  hats.  As  I  have  said,  I  am 
no  metaphysician  and  approach  the  subject  merely 
from  the  point  of  view  of  the  plain  man.  From 
that  point  of  view  any  philosophy  that  tends  to  the 
disparagement  of  reason  is  pernicious,  and,  what- 
ever M.  Bergson  may  desire,  his  philosophy  has 
that  tendency.  That  we  are  all  of  us  usually 
guided  by  impulse  rather  than  by  reason  is  too 
true,  but  it  is  not  a  matter  for  satisfaction;  all 
progress  has  been  the  result  of  the  correction  of 


BACK  TO   VOLTAIRE  313 

impulse  by  reason,  which,  after  all,  is  the  only 
thing  that  distinguishes  us  from  other  animals. 
As  for  intuition,  by  what  test  can  it  possibly  be 
tried,  who  is  to  decide  between  the  various  intui- 
tions of  various  people  ?  The  Church  itself  has  had 
the  good  sense  to  recognise  the  difficulty  by  re- 
fusing to  allow  the  revelations  experienced  by 
saints  to  be  imposed  as  matters  of  faith.  Be  that 
as  it  may,  of  one  thing  there  can  be  no  doubt, 
namely,  that,  as  I  have  said,  those  who  have  been 
influenced  by  M.  Bergson  are  reactionaries  to  a 
man.  He  has  been  one  of  the  strongest  reactionary 
forces  in  France  during  the  present  century.  I 
frankly  admit  that  that  fact  is  enough  for  me,  and 
Pragmatists,  at  any  rate,  must  admit  the  validity 
of  the  test. 

The  Church,  however,  has  officially  refused  the 
aid  that  M.  Bergson's  philosophy  seems  to  give  it. 
It  condemned  the  Modernist  adaptations  of  Berg- 
sonism,  and  I  am  not  sure  that  some  of  M. 
Bergson's  works  are  not  on  the  Index.  This 
may  seem  stupid,  for  undoubtedly  Bergsonism  is 
the  forlorn  hope  of  those  who  wish  to  save 
Catholicism  for  intellectuals;  it  is  indeed  probably 
the  only  means  by  which  Catholicism  can  be  justi- 
fied to  the  modern  mind.  For  the  supposed  his- 
torical facts  on  which  Christianity  has  hitherto 
been  based  have  nearly  all  been  annihilated  bv 
historical  criticism  and  only  a  system  which 
dispenses  with  facts  can  save  it.  Yet  I  am  not 
sure  that  Rome  was  wrong  in  the  matter.  It  must 
always  be  remembered  that  Rome  is  above  all 
practical,  that  its  point  of  view  is  political— -I  use 
the  term  in  its  widest  sense — rather  than  religious 
or  theoretical.  Catholic  Rome  has  retained  the 
qualities  of  pagan  Rome  to  a  remarkable  degree  ; 
it  has  "  put  on  Christ  "  as  one  puts  on  a  garment, 


314         MY  SECOND   COUNTRY 

but  underneath  it  remains  the  same.  Ancient 
Rome  was  essentially  practical,  not  metaphysical 
or  theoretical.  The  practical  good  sense  of  pagan 
Rome  survives  in  Catholic  Rome  and  makes  it 
regard  with  suspicion  any  attempt  to  provide  a 
new  apologetic.  For  it  knows  that  the  safest  plan 
is  to  leave  things  alone  and  that,  if  it  once  allowed 
Catholics  to  begin  inquiring  into  the  origin  of  their 
religion  or  the  philosophical  basis  of  their  belief,  it 
would  be  all  up  with  it.  There  are  still  large  num- 
bers of  people  ready  to  open  their  mouths  and  shut 
their  eves  and  swallow  the  pill  whole ;  the  number 
is  no  doubt  diminishing,  but  so  much  the  worse, 
any  other  system  would  mean  the  end  of 
Catholicism.  And  Rome  knows  perfectly  well 
that,  even  if  Bergsonism  kept  and  perhaps  keeps  a 
certain  number  of  intellectuals  or  would-bp  intel- 
lectuals in  the  Church  for  the  present,  it  will  never 
keep  the  masses  of  the  people  in  it.  On  the  con- 
trary, if  priests  were  allowed  to  begin  expounding 
a  Pragmatist  or  Bergsonian  apologetic,  those  of  the 
masses  of  the  people  that  still  remain  in  the  Church 
— a  small  minority  in  France,  but  not  in  some  other 
backward  countries — would  soon  go  out  of  it.  They 
stay  because  they  believe  the  whole  of  Christian 
mythology  to  be  literally  true — I  am  speaking  of 
those  who  still  have  the  faith ;  there  are,  of  course, 
some  who  continue  to  go  to  Mass  by  habit  or  tradi- 
tion without  really  believing.  Rome  also  knows 
that  Bergsonism  will  go  out  of  fashion  and  that 
good  sense  will  reassert  itself  in  an  intellectualist 
revival ;  what  would  then  happen  to  those  who  had 
reiected  the  intellectualist  basis  of  Catholicism  ? 
Therefore  Rome  remains  firmly  intellectualist ;  the 
whole  system  is  perfectly  logical  and  consistent  if 
one  only  admits  the  premisses ;  the  one  thing  neces- 
sary is  to  prevent  anybody  from  inquiring  into  the 


BACK   TO   VOLTAIRE  315 

validity  of  the  premisses.  It  is  more  easy  to  do 
that  than  it  would  be  to  build  up  anew  on  a  fresh 
foundation. 

There  are  signs  already  of  an  intellectualist  and 
rationalist  revival  in  France.  It  was  always  in- 
evitable, the  French  character  being  what  it  is. 
Bergsonism  is  essentially  un-French,  although 
"  Propaganda  "  during  the  war  has  been  circulat- 
ing at  the  public  expense  pamphlets  written  to 
prove  that  M.  Bergson  is  the  only  true  and  lineal 
philosophical  descendant  of  Descartes  and  that  his 
philosophy  is  the  complete  synthesis  and  final  ex- 
pression of  all  French  philosophical  tradition.  Why 
this  thesis  should  have  formed  part  of  the  French 
official  war  propaganda  is  not  evident,  but  prob- 
ably the  explanation  is  the  mission  to  America  with 
which  M.  Bergson  was  entrusted  by  the  French 
Government  during  the  war.  He  went  to  stir  up  a 
warlike  spirit  and  to  promote  American  interven- 
tion, and  he  seems  to  have  manifested  a 
Chauvinism  of  the  purest  brand.  American  liberals 
speak  of  his  activities  in  their  country  without 
amenity — according  to  them  he  supported  the  most 
reactionary  elements  in  America  and  appealed  with 
the  skill  of  an  accomplished  demagogue  to  the 
worst  passions  of  the  multitude.  M.  Bergson  had 
already  shown  diplomatic  skill  in  connection  with 
his  candidature  for  the  Academy.  He  wrote  a 
letter  to  a  Jesuit  in  which  he  expressed  the  opinion 
that  his  work,  "  Creative  Evolution,''  logically 
tended  towards  the  belief  in  a  personal  God.  The 
Academy  is  a  bien-pensant  and  reactionary  body, 
which  attaches  great  importance  to  the  opinions  of 
its  members.  That  is,  no  doubt,  the  reason  why 
most  of  the  great  French  men  of  letters  during  the 
past  century  have  not  been  Academicians  and  why 
the  Academy  is  now— with  a  few  brilliant  excep- 


316         MY  SECOND   COUNTRY 

<t 

tions  such  as  Anatole  France,  Mgr.  Duchesne, 
Henri  de  Regnier  and  M.  Bergson  himself — a  col- 
lection of  mediocrities.  How  Anatole  France  ever 
became  an  Academician  is  a  mystery,  but  he  was 
elected  before  the  Dreyfus  affair;  he  would  never 
have  been  elected  had  he  been  presented  after  it. 
Perhaps  M.  Bergson 's  diplomatic  activities  have 
not  improved  his  credit,  but  the  reaction  that  I 
have  mentioned  is  due  to  other  causes.  The  war 
has  produced,  at  any  rate  in  those  who  have  taken 
part  in  it,  a  sense  of  realities,  which  is  impatient 
of  metaphysical  discussions  and  philosophical 
systems.  Above  all,  it  has  shown  the  disastrous 
results  of  impulse  and  religious  feeling — for 
patriotism  is  a  true  religion — and  the  import- 
ance of  reason.  Reason  has  been  completely 
dethroned  during  the  war,  and  the  consequences 
have  not  been  good  for  the  world.  So  far  as  my 
experience  goes,  the  young  French  intellectuals 
have  come  back  from  the  Front  convinced  rational- 
ists. M.  Barbusse's  latest  book,  "  Clarte,"  is 
symptomatic ;  the  future  probably  lies  much 
more  with  his  point  of  view  than  with  that  of  M. 
Bergson.  A  philosophy  which  commended  itself  to 
rich  idle  women  is  hardly  likely  to  appeal  to  men 
that  have  had  so  terrible  an  experience  of  realities. 
Probably  M.  Bergson 's  influence  in  France  has 
always  been  in  great  measure  due  to  his  great 
literary  gifts;  he  writes  a  beautiful  style  and  has 
remarkable  lucidity  of  expression.  Perhaps  it  is 
chiefly  as  a  man  of  letters  that  he  will  live.  But 
men  that  have  been  through  this  war  need  some- 
thing more  than  literature.  They  know  that 
ignorance,  illusions,  romantic  beliefs  made  the  war 
and  will  make  other  wars  unless  they  are  subdued 
by  reason  and  positive  knowledge.  Like  Simon 
Paulin  in  M.  Barbusse's  book,  they  want  clarity— 


BACK   TO   VOLTAIRE  317 

positive  facts,  not  metaphysical  speculations.  And 
their  nearness  to  death  for  five  years  has  empha- 
sised the  supreme  importance  of  life.  It  is  not 
they  who  will  "  bring  us  back  to  God,"  as  Mr. 
Britling  fondly  imagined ;  rather  do  they  say,  with 
Simon  Paulin,  "  Je  ne  vois  pas  Dieu.  Je  vois  par- 
tout,  partout,  1 'absence  de  Dieu."  For  no  succour 
came  to  them  from  an  indifferent  and  neutral 
Heaven.  They  see  that  Christianity  and  Patriotism 
justify  war  and  make  its  continuance  possible  by 
teaching  that  the  dead  are  better  off  than  the  living 
and  that  it  is  a  happy  thing  to  die  young  for  one's 
country.  Those  lies  have  been  the  excuse  of  the 
callous  indifference  of  the  old  to  the  slaughter  of 
the  youth  of  Europe  and  have  been  the  sedative 
which  has  prevented  revolt  against  the  great 
atrocity.  The  priests  of  Christ  and  the  priests  of 
Mars — the  two  functions  have  often  been  united 
in  the  same  individuals — have  glorified  and  encour- 
aged war  by  preaching  its  ennobling  and  purifying 
effects.  Did  not  an  Anglican  bishop  declare  that 
he  had  never  felt  so  near  to  Christ  as  at  the 
Front  ?  The  men  that  have  been  through  the  war 
and  not  merely  "  seen  it  through "  have  seen 
through  the  romantic  disguises  in  which  war  has 
been  decked  out  in  order  to  get  civilised  humanity 
to  tolerate  it.  They  will  have  none  of  the  illusions 
that  have  made  men  slaves  and  sent  them  to  kill 
one  another  without  knowing  why.  "  II  le  faut,  tu 
ne  sauras  pas,"  l  say  religion  and  patriotism.  They 
reply:  "  We  will  not;  we  will  know."  The  war 
has  thrown  everything  into  the  melting-pot :  all 
the  established  beliefs  and  traditions  which  were 
accepted  without  inquiry.  Henceforth  there  will 
be  an  increasing  number  of  men  that  will  ask 
"  why  "  before  they  accept  anything,  before  they 

1  "  Clart<V'  by  Henri  Barbussc,  p.   179,  Ac. 


318         MY   SECOND   COUNTRY 

submit  to  anything  that  may  be  imposed  upon 
them  as  a  self-evident  duty.  They  will  appeal  to 
reason  against  faith  and  tradition. 

Therefore  is  the  spirit  of  the  true  France  coming 
into  its  own  again,  and  the  young  intellect  of 
France  is  returning  to  the  rationalism  of  Voltaire. 
The  philosophy  of  the  drawing-rooms  belongs 
already  to  the  past.  It  was  an  agreeable  pastime  for 
people  with  too  much  to  eat  and  nothing  to  do — 
the  sort  of  people  who  in  England  and  America 
dabble  in  Christian  Science — but  it  is  out  of  date 
in  a  time  when  hard  facts  make  themselves  dis- 
agreeably insistent.  Before  long  perhaps  it  will 
not  be  possible  to  eat  at  all  without  doing  some- 
thing ;  such  conditions  will  be  favourable  neither  to 
Bergsonism  nor  to  Christian  Science.  The  convic- 
tion is  growing  among  the  men  in  France  that  have 
been  through  the  war  that  war  is  the  inevitable 
result  of  certain  social  and  economic  conditions, 
and  that  what  nineteen  centuries  of  Christianity 
have  failed  to  do  may  be  done  by  economic 
changes.  So  we  come  back  once  more  to  the  pre- 
dominance of  the  economic  factor  in  human  affairs. 
The  revival  of  Rationalism  can  only  aid  the 
triumph  of  Socialism. 


INDEX 


Academy,  the  French,  37,  315 

Action  Franfaise,  V,  75,  161, 
178 

Administration  and  Legisla- 
ture, 76 

Administrative  and  political 
systems,  73 

Agricultural  system,  222J 

Agriculture,  59 

Alsace-Lorraine,  50,  51,  64, 
180,  181 

Anti-Semitism,  71 

Augagneur,  M.,  261 

Authority,  respect  for,  31 

Avoues  and  Avocats,  129 


B 


Balzac,  197 

Bank  Clerks,  strike  of,  286 

Barbusse,  Henri,  234,  309,  316 

Barres,  Maurice,  268 

Barren,  Oswald,  212 

Bastardy  Law,  47 

Baudelaire,  37 

Bergson,  H.,  300,  309-312 
et  seq. 

Birth-rate,  48 

Bloc,  the,  136-7 

Bonnot,  259 

Boulanger,  178 ;  B.  move- 
ment, 162 

Bourgeois,  Emile,  "  History  of 
Modern  France,"  135 


Bourgeois,  the,  16  ;  deEnition 
of,  184 ;  and  the  prole- 
tariat, 21 

Bourgeoisie,  26,  191-94;  and 
peasantry,  26 

Bourget,  Paul,  306 

Briand,  Aristide,  17,  29,  97, 
129,  137,  154,  238,  261 

Brunetiere,  268,  303 

Business  methods,  antiquated, 
200-209 


Caillaux,  Joseph,  17,  123-125, 

139,  169,  208 
Catholic    Church,    political    in 

France,  299 

Catholic  obligations,  297 
Catholicism    and    Intellectual - 

ism,  313 

Ceccaldi,  Pascal,  62 
Chamber     of     Deputies,     the, 

method  of  election,  101 ;  split 

into  groups,  137 
Chambord,  Comte  de,  95 
"  Chant  du  Depart,"  38 
Charles  X,   23,   85,    136,    175, 

302 

Chateau  and  Cur6,  30 
Chauvinism,  38,  39,  130 
Cherfils,  General,  306-7 
"  Chinoiserie,"  82 
Christianity  and    Patriotism, 

317 

Church  and  State,  132 
Civil     Service,     English     and 

French,  147 


MY  SECOND  COUNTRY 


319 


320 


INDEX 


Civism,  34 

Cleanliness  neglected  in  schools, 
297 

Clemenceau,  M.,  65,  88,  137, 
140,  144-5,  154-161,  270, 
283,  285 

Clergy,  the,  30,  131 

Colonisation,  64 

Combes,  Emile,  25,  176 

Commerce  paralysed  by  the 
War,  53 

Commune  of  1871,  263 

Concierges  and  social  distinc- 
tions, 195 

Conseils-G6neraux,  80 

Constitution,  the  French,  94 

Coppee,  268 

Corruption,  political,  145  et  seq. 

Courbet,  186 

Courteline,  Georges,  Quotation 
from,  111  ;  his  works,  177 


Dantzig,  282 

Daudet,  Leon,  75 

Daumier,  186 

Decentralisation,  26,  177 

Decorations,  149 

De  la  Barre,  Chevr.,  290 

Delaisi,  M.  Francis,  52,  66-68, 
70 

Delcasse,  M.,  169,  176 

Deputies  and  their  wives,  155 

Deroulede,  Paul,  39,  268 

Descaves,  Lucien,  177 

"  Dictatorship  of  the  Prole- 
tariat," 273,  278 

Dilke,  Sir  C.,  101,  137 

Divorce  Cases,  35 

Dreyfus  Case,  26,  126,  162 

Dumoulin,  M.,  285 


Elections,  local,  78-80;  Sena- 
torial, 99 ;  for  Chamber. 
101-105 

Engels,  237,  257,  273,  275,  278 

"Etatisme,"  74  (note),  116, 
163,  238 

Exchange  against  France,  66 


Factory  Acts,  inadequate,  113 
Family,  limitation    of,    43 
Ferry,  Jules,  and  the  Educa- 
tion Law,  130 
Finance,  53 
Financial    Institutions,    power 

of,  84 

First  Communion,  306 
Flaubert,  223 
Forms  of  politeness,  37 
Fox,  Charles  James,  166 
France,  Anatole,  35,  165,  186, 

197,  233,  289,  291 
France  and  Expansion,  236 
Franco-Russian  Alliance,  97 
Free    Trade    and    Protection, 

59 

French  character,  British  mis- 
takes about,  13  ;   a  paradox, 

I  /» 

Constitution  compared  with 

American,  95 

—  endurance,  33 

—  men  of  genius,  293 

—  race  not  decadent,  14, 15 

—  the,    contrast    between    in- 
dividual   and   collective   in- 
telligence, 19 

—  the,  keen    to  recognise  in- 
tellectual worth,  18 

Frondism,  31 


"Economic  Malthusianism," ' 
Education,  80 


G 

Gambetta,  94,  136 
Gauloiserie,  291 


INDEX 


321 


General  «?    Confederation       of 

Labour.  256  et  seq.,  284,  303 
George,  Mr.  Lloyd,  275,  283 
Godard,  Justin,  270 
Government     appointments 

sought  for,  212 
"  Great  Press,  the,"  144 
Griffuelhes,  257 
Guerard,  A.  L.,  183,  188-190, 

199,  209,  213 

Guerre  Sociale,   la,  258   et  seq. 
Guesde,     Jules,     238-9,     256, 

260-61,  263 


H 


Havoc  of  the  War,  52 

Hennessy,  M.  Jean,  179 

Herve,  Gustavo,  258 

High  Finance,  its  influence, 
71,  72 

and  the  capitalist  sys- 
tem, 159 

Holy  Alliance,  the,  165 

Hugo,  Victor,  9,  18,  37,  186 


Lafargue,  Paul,  266 

Lafayette,  86 

Lagardelle,  257 

Landlords    unduly    favoured, 

117 

Lansdowne,  Lord,  283 
Lavisse,  Ernest,  268 
League  of  Nations,  the,  279, 

283 

Legislature,  the  French,  99 
Lenin,  274 
Libel,  Law  of,  122 
Living,  the  Art  of,  57 
Local     authorities,     restricted 

powers  of,  80 
Loisy,  Alfred,  276 
Loubet,  President,  25,  176 
Loucheur,  M.,  65,  77 
Louis  XVI,  113,  160 

—  XVIII,  85,  136,  175,  302 

—  Philippe,  23,  75,  171,  175 


Illegitimacy,  46 
Illegitimate  children,  51 
Illicit  commissions,  218 
Immigration  necessary,  56 
Income  Tax,  55, 106. 138-9, 192 
Inquests,  need  of  public,  123 
Intensive  cultivation,  221 
Isvolsky,  M.,  93 


Jacobins,  the,  167 

Jaures,  Jean,  97,  98,  115,  169, 

233,  263,  287 
Jews,  189  ;  as  men  of  business, 

198,  201 

Joan  d'Arc,  174 
Judicial  System,  119  et  seq. 


Klotz,  M.,  208,  286 


MacMahon,  President,  96,  110 
Manchester  Guardian,  Extract 

from,  68 
Manners    and     social    usages, 

28 

Mannesmann  Bros.,  90 
March,  M.,  and  Statistics,  49, 

225 

"  Marseillaise,"  the,  38 
Marx,  Karl,  171,  237,  255,  257, 

263,  273,  275 
Maupassant,     Guy     de,     197, 

223,  228 
Maurras,    Ch.,    75,    268,    269, 

304 

Metivier,  88 
Millerand,  M.,    108,    154,  237, 

256,  261 

Ministerial  corruption,  161 
Mirbeau,  Octave,  223 


322 


INDEX 


Modernist  movement,  299-302 

Money-lending,  72 

Monopolies,  State,  148 

Montalembert,  86 

Morocco,  62 

Municipal  Councils,  78  et  aeq. 


N 


Napoleon  I,  35,  76,  77,  132, 
168-9 

—  Ill,  23,  86,  136,  171,  183, 
230 

Napoleonic  Wars,  51 

National  Debt  and  repudia- 
tion, 285 

Nationalism,  279 

N'Goko  Sanga  Enterprise,  157 


Painleve,  M.,  29,  140,  142, 
161 

Panama  affair,  157 

Paper  manufacturers,  65 

Paris  and  France,  22 

Parliament,  discredit  of,  111 

Parliamentarians  and  respon- 
sibility, 143 

Party  government,   141-2 

Pascal,  292 

Patriotism,  174  et  seq. 

Patronage,  152 

Pawnbroking,  a  municipal 
monopoly,  249 

Peasant  proprietors,  220  et  seq. 

Peasantry  and  politics,  230 

"  Petit  Rentier  "   class,  184 

Places  of  worship  in  London 
and  Paris,  305 

Poincar<§,  M.  Raymond,  96,  97, 
175 

Police  and  public,  89 

Political  conversions,  154 

—  situation,  11 

Ponsot,  Georges,  270 

Pouget,  257 

Population  statistics,  44, 49,  222 

Postal  service,  244 


Pragmatism,  292 
Pragmatist  oath,  311 
President    of     the     Republic, 

96-8 

Professions  overcrowded,  213 
Profiteers,  65 
Proletarian  ideas,  232 
Proletariat,    meaning    of    the 

term,    10 ;    dictatorship    of, 

273,  278 

Property,  subdivision  of,  220 
Proportional     representation, 

115 
Prosperity  and  cost  of  living, 

41 

Protection,  64,  227 
Provinces    and     Departments, 

172-3 

—  and  races,  173 
Public  schools  and  universities, 

29 


Radical  Party,  1 38  et  seq. 
Radicaux  Socialistes,   138-141 
Railway  and  tramway  system, 

239-246 

Ransome,  Arthur,  274  (note) 
Rationalism,  315  et  seq. 
Reactionaries,  268  et  seq. 
Reconstruction,  40,  57 
— of   devastated  areas,  69 
Referendum,  the,  179 
Reinach,  Jos.,  268 
Religion  and  the  War,   307 
Religious  districts,  305 

—  orders,  133-36 
Renan,  291 
Rentiers,  28 

Revolution,     results     of     the, 
164,  169,  174-177 

—  of  1848,  183 
Ribot,  M.,  92,  96,  208 
Rights  of  Man,  Declaration  of, 

170,  181 

Robespierre,  167 
Roubaix  spinners,  66 


INDEX 


323 


Rousseau,  Jean  Jacques,   36, 

166 

Rousset  Case,  the,  91 
Rouvier,  M.,  169,  208 
Royer-Collard,  86 
Rural  life,  223 


S 


Saar  Valley  Coalfields,  59,  282 

Saint-Simon,  76 

Sanitation,    neglect    of,     114, 

209-12 

Secret  police,  86 
Senate,  election  of,  99 ;  powers 

of,  105-7 

Sentimentalism,  36 
Shop-stewards,  284 
Small  earnings,  214 
Small  property,  183 
a  subject  for  French 

literature,  197 

Sobriety  and  drunkenness,  22 
Socialism,     Syndicalism,     and 

State  Capitalism,  236 
Socialisme  contre  VEtat,  Let  77 
Socialist  Party,  60,    111,    115, 

141,  159,  237,  261   et  seq. 
Socialists  and  the  election,  112 
Sorel,  M.,  his  theories,  255—7, 

268 
State  monopolies,  246 

—  and  railways,  239 

—  Socialism,  252 
Steeg,  M.,  92 
Steinheil  Case,  122 
Street  nomenclature,  78 
Strikes  and  revolution,  284 
Swinburne,  A.  C.,  9 
Syndicalism,  256  et  seq. 


Thiers,  M.,  95 
Thomas,  Albert,  97 
Thureau-Dangin,  Paul,  74 
Tipping  system,  219 
Tobacco  monopoly,  247 
Trains  and  tramways,  241,  244 
Tribunal  Correctionnel,    127 
Trotsky,  93 
Tunis,  63 
Turmel,  M.,  124-5 


Vandervelde,  Emile,  10  (note), 

77,  101,  235,  238 
Vendee,  La,  30,  172 
Verdun,  15 
Verlaine,  37 

Villain  Case,  the,  126,  287-8 
Viviani,   M.,    108-9,   154,  174, 

261,  270 
Voltaire,  36,  166,  289,  291-2 


W 

Waldeck-Rousseau,    25,     133, 

145,  256,  261 

War  and  the  population,  50 
Wealth,  distribution  of,  42 
Western  Railway  of  France, 

239-41,  262 

Wetterl6,  the  Abbe",  180 
"  White  Terror,  the,"  85 
Wilson,  President,  281-3 
Wine,  40 
Wine-growers'  lives,  58 

revolt,  15 

Wine-growing  districts,  life  in 

231 


Tangier,  Visit  of  the  ex-Kaiser 

to,  63 
Temps,  Le,  181 


Zola,  Emile,  197,  223 


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